The Long war
by AB Norway
Summary: My view of the first return in power of RDA - under a new management with a new and more patient, courteous and apparently benevolent leadership - but: With a sly and more determined plan to get the minerals wanted. A more dangerous opponent?
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

* * *

**Prologue**

Vytautas Iniskius was born in the city of Philadelphia PA, USA. By background he was lithauian and proud of it, but even more important to him was his faith, he was a most devout Catholic Christian. He had married his sweetheart since childhood, Ewa, and they shared faith, background, interest for and career in the culinary art, they had worked as cooks at a canteen belonging to a RDA subsidiary. They had lived a frugal but happy life, they had three children who all ended up in good jobs. But good education doesn't come free so to pay down tuition mortgages for their offspring they took a ten year appointment to the mining station at Pandora, ExtraSolar Colony 1, popularly called "Hell's Gate". The good Christian couple couldn't really like that nickname but they were not its makers so they didn't make too much fuss about it.

Born and raised as devout catholic Christians, they were appalled by the inhumane attitude of the RDA soldiers towards the Pandoran nature including its inhabitants. What the soldiers saw as an ever threatening danger from wildlife, atmosphere and hostile natives, they saw a splendid work of creation by the Good Lord, may be at the 8th day of Creation, why not? That it was possible to transfer minds into avatars and back was to them a proof that Na'vi people were sentient beings not meant by Our Father to be eradicated or exploited unto extinction but brought the True Light of the Great White Flock.

So one day when a maintenance worker forgot his master key card at his dinner table, Vytautas copied it before handing it back. It might come useful some day.

That day came when the soldiers and most of the civilians at Hell's Gate had gone to torch the Tree of Souls. Apart from Max and the avatar drivers very few had been left behind, Quaritch distrusted the avatar drivers so he locked them into their quarters. Vytautas and his wife were left behind too, to make a victory celebration dinner in the evening.

Vytautas found Max sitting depressed at the breakfast table after the attackers had left. Some inner voice spoke to him: "This man can make far better and more righteous use of that keycard copy you took than you can, Vytautas!" He let his conscience have its day, he gave Max the key card copy he had. Max then hurriedly ran to the avatar barrack, unlocked the door in and roused the avatar drivers. They unlocked the avatar link room and moved into their extra bodies. Then they hurried to the armoury which Max opened with his key card. Max and the avatars then ran to the computer mainframe room, the technician they meet there was swiftly knocked out. While now Max took place in front of the keyboard the armed avatars took up position at each of the three doors into the Command & Control Centre tower.

Inside there Selfridge was watching ever more revealing signs at his communication systems that the attack in the Hallelujah Mountains didn't quite play out as Quaritch had promised. Then it was that Max typed in a command to unlock all locked doors, a click and the doors were open. The avatars then burst into the large hall where the top brass at Hell's Gate not in the assault party was assembled with a small handful of body guards. Everyone were commanded down at the floor with hands behind necks. Only one shot was fired, when a techie tried to reach for a keyboard he got a bullet in his arm.

For their vital contribution the couple was allowed to stay on at Pandora, with Max' guarantee. Vytautas kept on as cook to the reduced staff while Ewa took over as housekeeper.

At the afternoon the next day the RDA troopers and techies were marched on board a space ferry called down from the ISV hovering up there, some of them at stretchers. A joyful celebration broke out at once the sound of the leaving space ferry had died down. Max sent out a message to Earth that the moon of Pandora now was sovereign territory and was meant to remain so for ever, and woe to anyone intending to disturb the peace of the land! ISVs on their way could choose whether they wanted to land and offload their cargo to be traded for with some mineral. Miners, techies and administrators were declared persona non grata, and avatars with their drivers would be interviewed to find out if they were to be offered their chance. Last but not least, in the appendix to the message was shown documents explaining why these restrictions were imposed: Videologs detailing events, faximiles of logbooks and documents chronicling the events, air and satellite photographs showing what had been going on. Lastly a speech by Mo'at enjoining humans to leave this spot in the sky alone, and people at Hell's Gate saying their goodbye with family back home.

The day after the eviction celebrations carried on with a more formal event for the participating chieftains and their heroes in the battle including the avatars, lots of inter-clan diplomacy was carried out, the Omatikaya clan cook put his culinary abilities in high gear and an important item in that celebration was Jake's final "body switch". Second day after the eviction celebrations continued in all the local hometrees, also at Hell's Gate. Part of the celebration at the base that day was the official renaming of the base to "Augustine Research Station".

At the end of that day a spoonful of serious thinking was added for the avatars and their human supporters. Jake and Neytiri held a speech detailing the future of humanity at Pandora: A strict deadline, six years – i.e. until the departure of the last ISV spaceship sent from Earth before the eviction, was set when research projects would have to be terminated and the avatar drivers would have to make their choice between pink skin or blue skin, there would be demands to respect for nature and people, and the demands to loyality and assistance against renewed RDA intrusions also in the coming time were clearly stated.

They were clearly explained that life at Pandora after that date would be very, very different from what they were used to at Earth or even in the Augustine Research Station: No comfortable amenities, no elegant garment, no exciting entertainment the sort they were used to at Earth, no industry who could produce things for them, no shops where they could go to acquire things, no money for what they did… They had those six years to think if they really wanted such a life, it would be a clean life much more like humans were biologically meant for than current life at Earth – but such a romance with the environment would wear thin sooner or later. After that date no more ISVs were to be expected and the base would slowly but inexorably revert to the jungle. Any ISV arriving after that date should be regarded with suspicion.


	2. Last Years of Human Welcome

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

**Author's Note**

This chapter deals to a great extent with how Jake is making ready for a new RDA push which he knows is coming.

* * *

**Last Years of Human Welcome**

Soon after his "body switch" Jake had a talk with Mo'at and told her that in the very likely coming conflict he would, to save both human and na'vi lives need to play a psychological game.

Mo'at replied: "How are you going to do that, my son?"

Jake answered: "By giving them shocks, firstly by showing them that we know some stratagems from Earth military history. Secondly by giving them a shock of surprise. They come here thinking that we are brutish savages or may be noble savages, we will show them that we are noble civilized people. That we can do with 'military discipline and showmanship'. I will need the help of Trudy and Jeff for that too."

Time started to pass. Max, Trudy (when she had fully recuperated from her serious injury during the Great Battle) and Norm became the triumvirate at charge at the Augustine Research Station. People at the base distributed chores among themselves in addition to their research projects, more or less connected with their academic or practical specialty. A new hometree was located and then moved into by the Omatikayas. Jake, Trudy and Jeff taught the Na'vi the use of guns, handgrenades, AA rockets, panzer rockets, close encounter fighting etc. to the warriors of his clan. Jake worked hard with reforming the coalition established for the occasion of driving the RDA off Pandora into a lasting bond. Such an entity needed a structure to last and he wanted it to last well beyond his own life time. He relied heavily on his fame as victor in the Great Battle and as the Sixth Toruk Makto to shape it.

What he created was in "Inglisi" terms a confederacy, to make the content of the term understandable to Na'vi people he called it a "network", comparing it to a fishing net: Such a network would need all its members to stick together and assist each other to not be destroyed during times of need – like if Sky People attempted another attack – while still flexible enough to allow some member clan to be active while other were recuperating from service. People of noted exceptional ability in some special field were admitted to Jake's personal staff at the head of the confederation. They were Omatikayas like Mo'at and Neytiri, Avatars like Norm and others, and from other clans. They were his permanent councillors he could discuss with at any time, much like a permanent government at Earth. Jake asked the clans to band together with at least seven and preferably not more than twelve neighbouring clans to form a tribe (nkxi) for mutual assistance, two hundred clans would make for an unwieldy confederation council, some twenty tribal representatives would be far better. Each tribe would then elected a leader ("nxi'eyktan") and create a tribal council to mediate conflicts between clans, and may be pass them up to the great council of the whole confederation to debate. The clan elders could then keep an eye on their representatives in superior bodies and call them home if they didn't behave to the clan's liking – an important check on the power of the tribal and confederation rulers.

The superiour tactics and weapon handling he taught the Omatikaya warriors was taught to warriors from other clans too, he made sure to make them train together to learn to know each other. He put much effort in keeping the confederation he assembled to fight the RDA people intact and if possible extend it, who knows what might come when the RDA was going to be back as they probably would in about six years…

What Jake had at his disposal wasn't very much in the way of modern weaponry. Sure, the confederates had some rockets, many guns and hand grenades but their mainstay had to be spears, knives and bow and arrow still. Jake kept the firearms in use for the élite warrior groups only, they were drilled relentlessly with them. Some older warriors objected to them, insisting that the bow and arrow was what had defeated the tawtute at the Great Battle, the bow had been the weapon of his grandfather and before him his grandfather again. It took much convincing to make warriors understand that they had won the Great Battle in spite of not because of lack of firearms, because Eywa had sent in her animals. It would no doubt please Her mightily if they could defeat the Sky People without divine intervention next time…

Making Na'vi accept modern organization wasn't simple either, the principles of hierarchy and deference to given orders didn't rest lightly on their shoulders. Finally, drilling in formal ranks was felt as an abomination too but the prospect of fighting without a single shot appealed to many.

Jake established a rank system above the clans, he named himself a Network Weaver, as a military rank equal to a general at Earth, and named Tsailoni the Tipani his network weaver assistant. Tsailoni was an experienced warrior with a unblemished reputation, he had fought gallantly during the Great Battle. He was however of a rather traditionalist outlook but Jake managed to convince him with many lessons from Earth history and by playing games in the sand, using stones and sticks to represent warriors on foot, on fa'li or ay'ikran, versus gunships, infantry and AMPs, and at a fortified base like Hell's Gate. Jake took on a broad golden armband with embroideries as his military insignia and gave a narrow golden one without embroideries to his assistant. He declared that when he one day was to resign the council was to elect his successor and he told them then to consider his aide for many years first of all.

Warriors from a tribe together made up a "nxi kumpongu", a "tribal war party", equal to a regiment, with a nxi kumpongu eyktan and a nxi kumpongu srung eyktan at its head – a colonel and a major – with insignia a broad white armband with embroideries and a narrow one without.

The warrior band of one clan, in the mean about 50 warriors, was under a tsamshiu eyktan and a srung tsamshiu eyktan – comparable to a captain and a lieutenant – with insignia a brown armband with embroideries and a narrow one without. All the scouts, hunters and other capable with weapons were grouped in gangs of fifty or so lead by aysaronyu eyktan – comparable with a sergeant with a broad black armband with embroideries they took on in wartime, they were a reserve force under the captain too if they were needed in wartime. And about one in ten warriors, hunters etc. were named siltsan tsamshiu, siltsan taronyu etc, i.e. "good warrior", "good hunter" etc. Jake made a point of making the siltsan tsamshiu realize that he once, long ago at Earth, had been a siltsan tsamshiu himself. With good training and long studies under experienced superiors they could rise to high rank too one day…

Furthermore, Jake established a nucleus of a navy, with Derek Lester Gill the marine biologist avatar driver as admiral ("pirogue eyktan") with a broad blue armband with embroideries and a vice admiral ("srung pirogue eyktan") with a narrow armband without, for the time being that job was left vacant. The canoes from a clan were given to a commander and a commodore ("canoe eyktan, srung canoe eyktan"), with a broad green armband with embroideries and a narrow one without as insignia respectively, their canoes flew sails in their armband colour and with a golden streamer from the mast tops if they were in command, as opposed to the white sails of ordinary canoes. And every canoe crew was directed by a skipper with a black armband.

Finally, Jake arranged a career way up through ranks. Siltsan tsamshiu, taronyu etc. would often be remarked during their training time in their teens and given their thin black armband even before they had their ikran. These warriors who came out "tops of their classes" were offered to go to the "war school" of the tribe, those who accepted went to the school Jack, Jeff and others established for the tribe the Omatikayas went into, soon most tribes had their own. At the "war school" they were given broad, black armbands with embroideries, looking like taronyu eyktan etc. that is and educated in tactics, strategy etc.

After two years at school they "graduated" and could go to tsamshiu eyktan with a vacant srung tsamshiu eyktan for employment. Thus Jake wove the clans together in tribes. After two years a srung tsamshiu eyktan was to be regarded as finish qualified at his level and could either remain with his tsamshiu eyktan and wait for opportunity to take over after him, or leave to be appointed tsamshiu eyktan by another clan. Tribe leaders were asked to appoint srung kumpongu eyktan from tsamshiu eyktan with interest of promotion, it would of course entail leaving his clan so not all tsamshiu eyktans wanted it. Likewise, after two years of learning to know the tribe and its land he could either wait to take over after his boss or apply another tribal council for appointment to kumpongu eyktan. Jake made it clear that his own, personal assistant were to be appointed from kumpongu eyktans, after two years of learning how to manage a top job he could take over after Jake should need arise. Jake meant to knit the whole arrangement together by the force of ambitions of upward mobile warriors.

One of the avatar drivers not a scientist was Geoffrey Enright, nicknamed "Jeff", formerly the physical coach of the avatar team. He used to be a buddy of Jake during the time at Hell's Gate – he was a former Royal Marine, they had lots of experiences to chat about… He might be a hard but never brutal teacher on the training grounds but soon as he was off it he became a jolly friend of everyone, he had an ability all his own to pop up from nowhere whenever and wherever an opportunity for merrymaking showed up – some thought him a little too fond of the strong spirit the na'vi brewed... He was born in London East End and was tolerant to lots of exotic culture, in a way few other RDA soldiers were, in a way Jake had needed lots of time to learn to be.

Vytautas and Ewa now got into contact with Na'vi people, it was a tenuous contact but that was still more than no contact at all. They were however, personal believers as they were, disappointed by the Paganism they saw among the na'vi and that avatar drivers were obviously drifting into. So they had a long chat with Norm about this problem. Norm was out of a catholic family himself too, however of far less strict upbringing. He warned them strictly against ever considering trying themselves as missionaries, Jake was never going to accept it and Neytiri was likely to react violently. And they were of course lay people without theological education, so better not try... End of the story was that they left with the last ISV returning to Earth before the base finally was set to crumble, with Jake's personally written best attestation for work done to the utmost satisfaction of their employer, the Na'vi Confederation.

Along with them also went Harold Nuñez, the only of the original rebel avatar drivers who simply couldn't manage to convince himself that the primitive life at Pandora really was preferable to the more comfortable but unnatural and riot prone Earth with its foul air and water and that degraded nature. His life interest, he was machine engineer by study, didn't help: Imagine a machine engineer in a land where machinery was banned… So when the crucial date came and the Augustine Research Station was to be abandoned, there were no more need for systems maintenance any more – the people there simply had no need for his services any more either. He happened not to have established any romantic connection with any woman either, there was in the end simply nothing connecting him to Pandora any more and he took the natural consequence of it. He returned to Earth when the last ISV called too – or so he and the Iniskius two thought…

New ISVs annually arrived, supplies were purchased from them and paid for with unobtanium mineral, a few avatar drivers were allowed to settle while the rest were sent off, they were interrogated by Norm and Max to check whether they would fit in with life at the station as it was now run, the majority of the arriving drivers were sent back along with techies and soldiers. A similar speech as had been given the original avatar rebels was also given them, but with stricter demands since those who had taken part in the war against RDA with distinction deserved special privilegia. They were mostly taken into the Augustine Research Station at more subordinate level, like research assistants and as helping hands in the base daily running.

Most of the new avatar drivers and personnel behaved properly, at least after some "convincement". Only two were kindly asked to return to Earth. That was William and Celia Gehrken, a paleontologist and archaeologist couple. They did some rather inappropriate digs and since their studies simply needed digging they gave up and returned to Earth when the next ordinary ISV called. There were a total of 28 humans at Pandora at the significant date, two of them had never until then had any avatar of their own, Max and Trudy.

**List of Na'vi Terms**

Eyktan – leader in general.

Nkxi (invented term) – bundle. Jake uses this as an intermediate administrative and political unit between the Network (or confederacy) and the clans.

Olo'eyktan – clan leader. Political and social head of a clan.

Siltsan – good. Jake uses this as a qualifier denoting an élite warrior, hunter, healer etc. Siltsan tsamshiu – a military rank Jake creates, somewhat equal to corporal at Earth.

Tsamshiu eyktan – leader of warriors. Jake turns it into a military rank somewhat equal to a captain at Earth.

Srung – help, assistance. Jake uses this as a qualifier denoting next-in-command, assistant, adjutant, and slated to take over the main job. Srung tsamshiu eyktan thus equals a lieutenant at Earth, srung kumpongu eyktan in the same way denotes major. Tsu'tey would have been a srung olo'eytkan when Jake joined the Omatikaya, and Neytiri srung tsahik.

Kumpongu – war party, Jake sets it as a war party of more than one clan's warriors.

Kumpongu eyktan – leader of a war party. Jake creates this as a military rank more or less equal to a colonel at Earth.

Tsahaylu – the brain-to-brain connection through nerve fibers in the queue.


	3. First Troublesome Omen

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

* * *

**First Troublesome Omen**

When the last ordinary ISV left six years after the Great Battle, everyone knew that now a strong date was approaching in the distance. An agreement never publicly declared developed among the drivers: Love stories should be kept for the avatar bodies when they became seriously intimate. Avatar creation was tricky without a specialized lab such as Max didn't have, so better not give him more struggle with new small pink-skinned ones than he already had at hand. New small blue-skinned ones would of course be less of a problem…

One day, some weeks before ISV "Canopus" came calling, Max announced that he had discovered a wormhole in space not far from Alpha Centauri C, that red dwarf star only faintly visible at Pandora. It just hung up there. Funny affair, Max thought but there are so many quirks in nature so why not.

Then suddenly one day ISV "Canopus" announced its arrival, not quite seven years after the Great Battle. It would be expected to be the last ISV to leave Pandora for Earth, the couple of Iniskius og Harold Nuñez took the opportunity to leave this world since it was inimical to their dreams. They never got further than the ISV but that wasn't known the Pandora people until long after.

While the ISV "Canopus" was still lingering in orbit Max and Norm held a speech, they announced that the day the people at the Augustine Research Station had been reminded about repeatedly was now coming close, it was time to get started in earnest to make ready for the life to come afterwards. The abandonment of the base was obviously drawing close – the buildings and many of the appliances sustaining human life were creaking already, the base was nearly swamped by jungle vegetation already and now that the last ISV to be expected was about to leave there would be no more spare parts coming from Earth that could be purchased. In other words: In a few years the whole base would collapse any how, so to get away safe and hale they would have to go into their avatars, go to the Omatikaya and ask to be kindly allowed to try a "body switch" of their own. There was always a small risk of not making it through and they would die, but those obviously incompatible with a life at Pandora had been weeded out – the Gehrken couple, the Iniskius couple and Hal Nuñez, they were gone from Pandora by now. The rest of them should stand a good chance.

Norm had lost his original avatar in the Big Battle but Max managed to extract some DNA from the mortally wounded avatar body, it was injected into a na'vi egg cell, grown and one day Norm had a new avatar once again. Max furthermore made an avatar ready for himself and one for Trudy, those avatars had been made by rather unorthodox techniques but they had been well tested so they stood good chances both of them. Those avatars were the last ones to be readied from Max's lab. That it had been possible to create avatars from rock bottom at all was due to the invention the newcomer Wayne Stuart Bell, Max' laboratory assistant these last years, had created in his leisure time.

What Bell's invention did was to mass clone a fertilized egg so that Max could run this mass through the DNA sequencer he did have, thus giving at least a minimal check-up of the fertilized egg cell. A complete XGSS set would have been much to prefer – it would for one thing have been a much less laborious analytical process with much less risk at destroying fragile egg cells. It would have completely eliminated the significant risk for not discovering a faint sign of some minor genetic abnormality like Trudy's stomach ailment – her stomach couldn't digest tiz oil, a squeeze from a plant root often used for na'vi food gravy, she got diarrhoea from it. And perfectly normal but not really desired effects of genetics would have been revealed, as Max came to discover himself – the Na'vi Y-chromosome looked in microscope almost precisely like an X-chromosome – Max' avatar was a perfectly well formed and completely normal na'vi female.

When the avatars showed such symptoms it was however already too late, too much precious time had gone into developing them already. They had to settle for what they could get and regard themselves lucky it wouldn't be more serious than that. Trudy was happy anyway – she got rid of the ugly scars that never ceased to itch, disfiguring the skin on her legs and torso since Quaritch shot down her helicopter during the Great Battle. By popular acclaim Max was renamed Maksine.

Now that the last regular ISV had left all knew that the days of the station were numbered. The scientific projects were written and submitted to Earth, with literature citations given and epilogues written, including a solemn good bye to humanity. The training for a na'vi life now began in earnest, the curriculum was all things at Pandora to improve their chances for making a sound and healthy life. They were provided with much literature about Pandora, nature and people; Norm held classes in culture and language, and Jake and some Omatikayas trained them in some necessary practical abilities like physical stamina, riding, archery, falling through air and flying, and in the profession they had chosen for their further life, so they should all be well prepared for it.

When Max and Norm were done with their speeches that day, the word was passed to the three high protectors of the avatar team, Mo'at, Neytiri and Jake Sully.

Neytiri intoned: "When inside the eye of Eywa I am sure She will see who is not good for life here, so you should do your best to make some rehearsals (Sideways glance at Jake: Was that the correct word, ma'Jake?) so train well these last months before you are going into the eye of Eywa, it is like you say an exam – I think 'exam' is the word – for you!"

Jake concurred: "Before you will be going to the Tree of Souls for your appointment with Her we will, when your teachers and profession mentor declares you ready for it, test your ability in such practical abilities you will need to master, and your knowledge of such subjects you will need to know, starting in about a year. All of you have chosen a profession among those common among the Na'vi and you have been educated for it, a master in that craft will come to formally test your ability in that craft. If you train and study well these coming months you should pass with flying colours, then you will go to the Iknimaya and catch your own ikran, only then are you ready for your meeting with Eywa in person. Young na'vi take about two years with learning such abilities, you (winking) are professional at learning new stuff so you will probably do it faster…"

Mo'at concluded: "We hope You will be learning and understanding well about our life, our traditions, our ways. Open your eyes, teach yourselves to see and you will live happy lives ever after!"

Careful preparations paid off, one by one all the avatars passed through all the tests with only a few hitches. Because the time delay due to those avatar creation processes not starting until Bell had found his invention, Max and Trudy were the last to pass through the Eye of Eywa. When doing the "body switches" there were some apprehension but it worked out fine in the end for all of them. Everything was in short now set to allow the building complex to go to pieces on its own accord. But radar surveillance, arms production and a few other functions were kept up for as long as possible at the station, it would be good to get an early warning and be well armed when things were up…

Most of the avatars took up some profession among the na'vi which was roughly translatable to their old practical or scientific background. For instance doctor Jenny Dixon and her psychologist husband Nicholas (nicknamed "Nicky"), known at the Augustine Research Station for their stormy marriage and his casanova habit, went to the healing profession. Roberta Mullins ("Bobbie") and the excessively prude spinster Ella van Laare, respectively biochemist / pharmacist and botanist / gardener in the hydroponic lab, went into the gathering profession.

Some few had trouble though. Maksine of course, but luckily she soon found herself a girl friend among the na'vi, coming from the Ikran clan and settled with them, making a most happy healer couple highly useful to the Ikran clan. Most problems of all had the geophysician Shawn and his geologist wife Maeve O'Leary, they would be cut off from hacking stones and using computers always hereafter. But their computer wizardry was useful for eavesdropping at space, assisting Angela Cresson in her watch-keeping. And as good Irishman and Irishwoman they had good sense for lively music and dancing – Shawn made many of the musical instruments himself. With a little assistance from MacGregor the Scotsman they could really enliven parties, and when Shawn played a reel or a hornpipe they even made it ripple in very stolid American and English feet. Even na'vi people were astonished when Maeve did her little "Riverdance".

After the speeches of Max, Norm, Mo'at, Neytiri and Jake; Angie Cresson (nee Stennis) walked back to her main assigned task. She sat down at the radar consol to keep on her watch for abnormal activity up in space. She and her husband Todd were matter-of-fact minded people, not given to hysterics and euphoria, they were unassuming everyday people with little flare and elegance to them, but Max and Norm would have trusted them with their lives. She had been meteorologist by study and was tasked with being satellite manager, radar watchkeeper, traffic controller when space ferries was landing and in general the "switchboard lady" at the base. Todd had been the utility worker at Grace's avatar team, always readying and repairing outstations and maintaining all the scientific tools, now he was the janitor at the Augustine Research Station, all the time fighting a battle he knew he was going to loose in the long run, to keep the jungle at bay. They always kept aloof from the romantic intrigues that soon ran all over the Augustine Research Station, they married at a ceremony which Norm arranged and Neytiri officiated, and witnessed by all the staff at the station. She took training for scouting, the na'vi respected her for her uncanny (in their eyes) ability to predict coming weather, while Todd took training for toolmaking.

Angie sat down at the radar screen and played recorded radar images in double speed so that she could see what had taken place while she listened to the speeches. She eyed the familiar dots of the now sputtering weather satellites, she decided to save electrical power by closing them down, in not so long time she wouldn't be able to contact them any longer, whether by satellite decay or by the wear and tear of the receiving systems down at Pandora. The big dots blinked dutifully some times and then went small. She saw the rather familiar dot of the ISV hovering up there, probably soon to be leaving the orbit of Pandora heading back to Earth.

Suddenly she remarked something extraordinary: A small dot separated from the ISV. The small dot caught speed and took course down towards Pandora – she sounded the alarm, this was a suspicious case. Norm came hurrying. But the space ferry course headed east, out in the eastern ocean and beyond the horizon, so nothing further was seen of it until the radar screen detected it taking off and leaving for space again. But obviously they had been doing something out there.

Jake soon started from time to time hearing reports from clans at Namana Land who had been visited by na'vi saying that they had come from the Zakali clan overseas, a clan nobody had heard about before. They came just to make a visit, talk and listen and then pass on. Jake found it funny and sent out scouts to locate them, and if possibly bring one such wanderer back to the Omatikayan New Hometree. But the scouts never found any of them, they had always left just before. Jake started thinking that something was going on, he just couldn't imagine what. It certainly didn't look like a full invasion.

Jake didn't know but they were actually the RDA agents permanently transferred to fully na'vi – like avatars sent out by the the PR department, scouting out the diplomatic landscape. Which clans were part of the confederation and which not, how was the confederation governed, what was the level of loyalty of the various clans, they were furthermore if opportunity allowed it without undue risk to spread rumours and support views undermining the position of Jake. Over the next years their reports were patiently collected and sent up to the main base at the moon of Svarog, and then passed on through the wormhole to Earth. That device gave the base at Svarog ability to instant communication with the RDA head office at Earth.


	4. Studies Presented for the RDA Board

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

* * *

**The RDA Executive Board Studies Concerning Pandora**

When Parker Selfridge finally arrived at Earth, he was welcomed home by a very different RDA than had sent him out. The news from Pandora had sent the share prices south and the shareholders had been bought out by a consortium of European interests, before he and the crew arrived. He, and the men who came to Earth along with him, were interviewed thoroughly to provide the new Executive Board with food for thoughts for further action, on top of the report that had arrived from the Augustine Research Station, submitted by the mutineers. Rumours soon ran about events at Pandora, but with some PR work it was whittled down to a tribal rebellion conspiring with disgruntled employees, inquisitive journalists were tracked down and their silence was bought. Selfridge was then speedily sent to a mining station in the Asteroid Belt to be director there. It was a good job bur not quite up to the authority he had been used to.

A new colonizing expedition planned long time ago any way was sent out, with much hardware but only a medium size crew. They struck up mining colonies at the three other moons with deposits worth speaking about, and used them as bases. The wormhole was constructed up there, for communication purpose, by the crew at Svarog, where the extra-solar headquarter was now located.

The new crew at the top of RDA company was a motley bunch from Europe. It was "new money" and "old money", hard-earned money and shady cash, brains and brawns. The top brass was all from Europe, but in the middle and lower ranks no questions were asked as to religion, political sympathies or country of origin, only of willingness to total loyalty and demonstrated ability. The new Board had a longer time horizon and greater patience, but they were by no means more benevolent per se than "old RDA", only more circumspect. They might just therefore be all the more dangerous opponents.

The company leadership had moved to the Swiss mid-size city of Zug. Basically the whole city had been bought. There were of course still independent small businesses in the city, like bakers, laundries and groceries, and public utilities like schools, social services and fire brigade, but heavy donations to state coffers had bought allowance to take over most of the city – industries were bought out with fat offers. So the company was free to cordon the city off from the rest of the world, with a security perimeter around the entire city urban limit and security inspectors roaming the city with full local police rights. Inside it city buses went from Intelligence department via Hiring department to Research department. The building of the Board of Executives was easily the largest in the whole city, with offices, lecture halls, library etc. To enter that building there was yet another strict security check to pass.

A glance into the supreme meeting room of the Board would that day show the RDA Board of Executives taking a close look at the various fields of Pandora geography, presented at the map shown at a small movie screen in the room. The size of the Pandora moon was some 80 % of the Earth. This moon had more water bound in the air, less in oceans and virtually no permanent ice sheets at all. The land mass was divided in smaller pieces, less in big land masses and more in archipelagos large and small. The oceans were not so wide, not that there were no big, open ocean basins but there were plenty of islands forming bridges. Even with a canoe it should be no unthinkable act to get around the globe.

The climate was mostly warm and balmy, even at the Polar covering continent it was only temperate. There were no mountains nearly as tall as those on Earth, even the tallest one hardly touched the 1000 meter mark, and there were few of them. The northern and southern ends of the largest continent was steppe land, the extreme northern headland had a Mediterranean climate of hot summers and mild winters. Some islands were barren but there were only few, isolated areas at land of what would be called "desert" on Earth, at Namana Land those desert areas were located in parts of the plains land north of the forests. With none of the continents very large there were few large rivers either.

The map was scribbled with names taken from the reports of dr. Augustine. The largest continent was the Namana Land, straddling the Pandora Equator, somewhat the size of Australia. It was shaped somewhat like a pear, with a peninsula pointing north like the stem of the pear. The Omatikaya territory lay just south of Equator, two thirds of the length down the length of the continent, with the Hell's Gate some thirty miles southwest of their current hometree, as recent space photographs showed. The only significant mountain range lay northeast of the Omatikaya territory and the largest river of the continent ran down to the eastern coast from it.

Out west there were a stretch of ocean but there was one archipelago rather close by. To the south there was a big, open ocean basin stretching out to some few islands and then the open sea around the Pandora South Pole. To the east was a big archipelago of very small islands and south of that a quite big island named the Marakxali Island. Up north was a fairly wide ocean channel between the Namana and the North Land continents where the Pandora North Pole was located in a corner. East of Marakxali Island there was the smallish Gargoyle Fish Land continent, then a big ocean basin with some archipelagos dusted over, and then the large Nongona Land continent, not quite as large as the Namana Land though. East of Nongona Land began a multitude of small archipelagos, the easternmost was the one just out at sea facing Namana Land to the west.

The fattest deposits of Unobtanium were, according to magnetic measurements of the ISVs that had been calling, located at Namana Land, North Land, Gargoyle Fish Land, at Marakxali Island and at some of the atolls north of it. Smaller deposits were almost everywhere.

The number of clans recorded by the space photographs looked like some twelve hundred all told, give or take a few: Animal herds might have been taken for clans by the eyes in space or there might be a number of small and only partly independent clans. Given an average of 2500 members of each significant clan, that should make up some three million na'vi in grand total. That low population density was of course due to the smaller land mass of the continents, the (from an Earth perspective primitive) food collecting and storaging technologies and the larger body mass of the na'vi, requiring more nutrition. Of all those clans there were about 200 at Namana Land, seventy at Gargoyle Fish Land, some 150 at Nongona Land and at North Land ten big and a number of small clans.

"This, fellow members of the Board, are the main features of the physical and demographic geography of Pandora. Our agents are right now putting their finishing touch on their study of the political landscape, their report should be due in a couple of months." Thus Marina Krasnitskaya concluded her presentation, she was the head of RDA department of PR – in practice leader of agitation, commercials and diplomacy. She was known as a hands-on leader carefully noting down all the small details of her projects in big databases and studying them carefully before ordering actions. She was a strict leader demanding professional perfection and mostly having it too. Her hometown was Noginsk, a suburb of Moscow, she had been appointed to her job by her mentor, a Russian "new rich". She was known to be virtually "married with her job" and she looked the part: She cultivated a boring, anonymous look and she wore big, thick glasses.

Soon miss Krasnitskaya could present the Board a diplomatic map of Pandora too. The main resistance against RDA business at Pandora was likely to be at Namana Land because that was were Jake Sully and his Omatikaya clan was located, so the affairs at Namana Land had been studied with most care. Agents researching the land found out that he was now the head of the clan, and with assistance from those humans who had remained at Pandora after the incident 12 years ago.

Most of the about two hundred clans at Namana Land could be roughly grouped in four different categories: Forest dwellers, edge-of-the-forest dwellers, plains nomads and coastal dwellers.

The Omatikayas was the best known of the fortyone jungle clans at Namana Land but then there were the Ali'tutean clan west of them and the Ekanagis east of them. North of the Omatikayas was the best known of the fiftytwo edge-of-the-forest dwelling clans, the Tipanis. To their far southwest was the Rongloa clan, to their distant southeast the Eymastua. North of the main forest, in a sort of "forest island at the sea of the plains" the Tskaha clan lived. A stripe of prairieland stretched out beyond the edge of the forest on both sides of the Equator line. The northern plains were inhabited by the Pa'li and the Nantang clan the southern plains, plus some forty more. There were fortysix coastal clans at Namana Land, the best known among them were Ikran to the south, partly living at some offshore islets. Then there were the U'o'ne at the southwestern seaboard and the Iranali'k at the eastern, the small Sunara clan lived at a number of small islands just offshore, overlapping at the Namana mainland. Finally there was the very large Amananga clan at the northern peninsula, at the "stem of the pear".

Furthermore there were twenty-something clans that didn't quite fit into this division. Among these were the Kilvan clan (River clan) to the northeast and two more clans up the river, living like coastal clans inland – at the largest river of the continent. The Onati clan lived at a lake of the river, like a small coastline, three other clans lived likewise at other large lakes at the continent. Further up the river entered a highland, this was the territory of the Mountain and Highlander clans and three others. Four clans lived in riverine and mangrove swamps and three steppe clans lived in oases in an environment so arid that the word "desert" could apply.

To these mainlander clans should be added the Western Islands clan, living at a big and some small islands a short distance out at sea.

At the rebellion the RDA troopers had been faced with 15 clans, fourteen mainlander clans plus the Western Islander clan. The Amananga clan was by the time of speaking the only large fully independent clan left at Namana Land, along with some less significant ones who either mostly toed the line of the Amanangas or were isolated leftovers – like Andorra and Liechtenstein at Earth. The others had joined with Jake Sully's confederation, more or less voluntarily.

Apart from the Namana Land there was the North Land, where the Pandora North Pole was located. The Ice Hunter clan lived there, a forest clan with some smaller, dependent clans living at the coastline. At Marakxali Island lived the coastal clan by the same name. At the atoll archipelago lived the Atoll Islander clan. At Gargoyle Fish Land lived seventy clans, most significant of them was the clan by the same name. And there were a good many other clans too, at Nongona Land for instance, but they had never been in heavy contact with humans and were not sitting atop big deposits of unobtanium, so those clans could wait with studying until later.

Miss Krasnitskaya concluded her presentation with a study on central reasons for the RDA failure last time.

Her analysis explained that the reason deepest down was that the RDA company never had found the right buttons to open up any real welcome among the Na'vi clans, and they had not cared too hard about finding any either. Exploitation against resistance could go all right if the settlement was extended into a complete Earth II colony, but the RDA company didn't want to run that cost, it would take terraforming the moon, complete eradication of the na'vi population and building a complete society with all functions.

During the best of time, while dr. Augustine had held her school, they had been tolerated, later the Omatikayas had turned to a passive resistance that turned active when they were severely provoked and also got a leader of seemingly no mean military ability in the renegade marine Jacob A. Sully. Since he now was the chieftain of not only that clan but had a number of other clans in support of him too, and he was most probably a implacable enemy of the RDA company by now, those clans would be unapproachable while he was at their helms. So the New RDA would have to approach clans not (yet) in Jake Sully's confederation, and if possible make some else defect. Only then could they be approached with merchandise.

It would be to the advantage of RDA if excavation of unobtanium could be done by the na'vi themselves. They would avoid the most abhorrent techniques and the most sensitive localities because they had local knowledge, not to mention that this would be the cheapest to the company. But the big problem would then be to motivate the na'vi to dig for the mineral. There would simply have to be some merchandise they would be interested in! The single problem: Which one?

The answer would probably be to utilize the differences between the clans. The thing was that not all na'vi clans were equally endowed with natural resources, and at some localities there was likely bitter competition for them. Those clans in the hardest rivalry could be offered two things: Firearms and the martial support of RDA marines to their political wishes. That should win the RDA company some na'vi friends.

All this presentation was witnessed by all the Board, one of whom was Molly Perrington, the South African permanent secretary of the Board. She was what once had once been called a mulatto by appearance, at home she was a contended housewife with three kids and happily married with an engineer in the company, at job she was highly valued for her computer-like ability to mentally record events and her uncanny ability to grasp a growing but unspoken opinion before the members of the Board were even aware of it. With her inside knowledge and her almost clairvoyant ability she would have been a serious danger to the company – but her loyalty was evident and beyond doubt.


	5. Fateful Decisions of the RDA Board

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

* * *

**Deliberations at the RDA Board for a Stategy at Pandora**

Four years after Angie had seen a small dot leave the big dot at the radar screen that was ISV "Canopus", i.e. in the year 2164, ten years after the 1st Human – Na'vi War, Jake heard about some Sunara fishers who had been threatened away from a contested fishing ground at the point of gun by some Amananga warriors. At GUNPOINT? From where did they get those weapons – they never took part in the Great Battle! And then the day after Jake had reports about the same happening to Iranali'k fishers at a barren island in the centre of a rich fishing ground contested with the Makxali and Atoll islanders – also by fishers brandishing firearms, also clans who never went to the War against RDA... Now this was so funny that Jake sent out some scouts to investigate, something was obviously going on even though evidences were fragmentary. Those clans replied the messengers evasively and denied having any such arms, the Sunara and Iranali'k fishers must have been slandering them they said.

This is a translation of a talk that occurred between the RDA diplomat Kasimir Mniszek and Lazafnu, olo'eytkan of the Amananga clan after the incident, spoken in flawless Na'vi.

Mniszek: "Olo'eytkan Lazafnu, I see You. The New RDA company is very grateful to the Amananga clan for not revealing my presence here to the messengers from the friends of the Omatikayas."

Lazafnu: "It is our pleasure to help our friend who has enabled us to defend our vital resources better. We WILL dig up the grey rocks you like in return. The least we could do."

M: "If you could get me more of those rocks I am able to get you more firearms and ammunition."

L: "What for? We have succeeded with defending our fisheries now."

M: "Remember that your competitor clans have firearms too and so has other clans who like the Sunara clan are friends of the Omatikayas. They may some day come back with many more warriors and those with the most firearms will then have an advantage."

L: "I can understand the wisdom in your talking. We will dig for more rocks so that we can have more of them."

M: "Now I will leave and not abuse the hospitality of my friends the Amanangas. But I leave a man with you who is expert on how to dig for rocks, he can explain you how to dig them with less tiring work. He will leave not so long time after me, when he has explained you some tricks. But make sure to tell him when he attempts to dig into something important to life, to Eywa, to your traditions! He is under strict orders to always show the utmost respect for Na'vi opinions."

Mniszek afterwards reported to his superior, Manolo Kontakarides, who noted developments in his database. Similar reports were arriving from other diplomatic agents, at North Land continent, at the atoll archipelago, the Marakxali island, from the Gargoyle Fish Land continent and from other stations too. Favourable summary reports were written and sent through the wormhole to the RDA Board. Satisfied people reviewed them.

James Gemmill, the CEO of RDA: "Ladies and gentlemen, as You can see from the reports from our agents at Pandora, we have had great success so far. Our secret agents have studied the diplomatic map and given us a very good picture. Contacts have been established where unobtanium mineral ore is available to us in abundance, we will soon have a full delivery from the Amananga clan pit up to the refinery at Svarog. Our na'vi customers have paid for the firearms we provided for them with appreciable amounts of ore."

He had been the head of the business alliance that took over RDA when the company had been lying sprawled on the floor after the first debacle. Gemmill was an Englishman with a capital E, the sort you need to go to Eton to become; in refined manners, elegant garments and polished way of talking. But no way of behaving could completely cover the ruthless businessman he was at his heart. He was a stickler for hierarchy, the licence to talk to him by his nickname "Jim" was a privilege not given lightly.

Gerhard von Schemoller, Chief of Finances: "So we have established mines for production of ore. But they are running at very low production as for now, we must somehow jack up the production volume. During colonial times in America they increased the aboriginal apetite for firearms by fanning the fires of inter-tribal conflict. Since the tribes oriented towards either England or France there was no lack of rivalry. But the problems with the Na'vi is their oh so profound peacefulness, it really takes a lot to egg them into violence, our company can't afford to wait a couple of hundred years until population pressure again forces them to look for new sources of resources. Competition for resources simply isn't a strong enough power among them to incite them to continuous conflict. Neither are they interested in dominating each other for the sake of pure ego satisfaction."

Von Schemoller was a German aristocrat of the old feudalistic school, demanding competent service and loyality, and caring the utmost for his staff in return. His staff adored him in return, his auditors were roaming around the various RDA projects and stations, and knowing that they had the full backing of their boss they were not afraid of confronting local directors if they suspected embezzlement, waning ability or petty quarrels. Many local directors hated those "pains-in-the-neck" like "Old Nick" himself.

Thierry Guerin, Chief of Security Operations: "I am still of the opinion that we should have flattened the whole place. Dropping thermonuclear bombs down into every restive corner would be a fairly quick end to any resistance."

Guerin was an old man by many regarded as left behind by time, utterly dependent on the opinions of his subordinates and often agreeing with anyone arguing well. His staff knew him well and often acted on his behalf, using him as a figurehead speaking the opinion of his staff. Their decisions were mostly intelligent and he had at least the good sense to not stand in the way of their wisdom.

Viveka Sundelin, Chief of Technical Operations like mining: "You forget that if we nuke the whole moon it will be too dangerous to go down at it and it will take very long time indeed until we can go down to do some mining then. Remote controlled mining is good but you do inevitably need to sometimes get on the spot to solve practical problems. I am more in favour of opening many new sites, we may even provide those na'vi who work for us with food and others, apart from protection of course, if they don't feel like going to war for us. We may in so case have to invest much more protection power to offer that security."

Sundelin was an efficient manager, rising not out of the techies but from the administrators of the department. She was a very down-to-earth and realistic mind, preferring rather to have her lunches with her staff than at the posh company restaurant of the Board, her staff admired her in return. She was in sum the incarnate image of the Swedish farming people she came from – practical of mind, no nonsense and in your face honest – but she was never impolite and careless.

Jerzy Kunderaczywicz, Chief of Research: "Also remember that it is an environment very different from Earth. Air is very different, water most probably too, cell biology must be different too. Preliminary reports we got from dr. Augustine demonstrated a strong resistance to radiation, it will probably take lots of research to find a virus and a poison gas that will certainly do its job without hurting our operations. This means that weapons of mass destructions at our disposal are unreliable in this environment. I have explained you this before and I do hope that I will not need to repeat myself yet another time. But we can certainly start a research project on this if the opinion on the Board is favourable to it."

Kunderaczywicz, often nicknamed "Jerry" for his complicated surname, was a rather nerdy scientist, known to be willing to fight like a lion against anyone roughing up his beloved projects but on the other hand sometimes astonishingly ignorant of the unintended effects they might have. Some of his staff in his absence whispered the words "Asperger's syndrome" about him. He hardly ever asked where the technologies and research results he needed came from – some said that the Intelligence department fed him with results from industrial espionage, not that it seemed to matter much to him.

Guerin: "We might offer the Omatikayas more firearms to supplement what they spend against their opponents, thus we can create an arms race. Furthermore, I am in favour of granting our laboratories licence to concoct a virus that is harmless to humans but aggressive against na'vi, and a poison gas that will kill all but decompose in a couple of weeks, when we go down to start digging that is."

Krasnitskaya: "You mean that we should take place behind both belligerents? That will be most disloyal to our newfound allies, if this is discovered they will certainly desert us. Or it might incite all out tribal war and then we will have no option but to get heavily involved militarywise, such a major conflict will not come cheap. And should so take place we should really have built up a strong force when the conflict breaks out in earnest."

She looked over to CEO Gemmill and winked: "May be we should invite a competitor of ours to Pandora and offer THEM to provide arms for the Omatikayas and their allies, like Britain and France did in colonial America? Just joking of course!"

Gemmill: "I understand that the last idea was meant as a joke. A better idea, someone?"

Sundelin: "I think we should stay satisfied for as long as possible with a large number of slowly producing mines staffed by as few RDA people as possible. Thus we can keep producing those small volumes very cheaply. Even if Jake Sully should find out that those clans are mining for export he can't risk going to war with them just to stop the mining, those clans are independent and free to choose their own friends."

Amerigo Rondini, Chief of intelligence: "When we reach the point of saturation, when no more arms are felt necessary so no more mineral needs to be dug out, what we like to start is a low intensity and long smoldering tribal war that is actually harmless and not impeding our business. That is our goal. It might be a good idea to give the Omatikayas and their allies some intolerable provocation. We can make them suspect their opponents not us with some masquerade and make-believe. Like a grievous insult or we can kill some notable person or persons."

Rondini was at work an ice cold, calculating guy, but he was known to be an exuberant one once leaving his car at home. He had gone his grades at the brutally tough "academy" at the streets of Palermo, he recruited most of his staff from his contacts with the Mafia. He was known to have put his relatives and cronies in good jobs at the RDA company.

Krasnitskaya: "Amerigo, I then ask you to carefully consider three problems.

Firstly, what will be the target or targets for the agents you send in. Jake Sully himself will be a tempting one but he is probably hard to touch and so will his wife and mother-in-law be, however significant they are. May I propose that you rather aim for some offspring they may have? You could think about giving one or more of our own clans a similar provocation too, when it becomes strictly unavoidable only – I agree with Viveka that we must not take such action one day before we have no option but that one if we want to increase the ore production.

Secondly, it is very important that the agents we send in to do this are well trained in the small details of history, behavior and language of those clans we are going to take on, and that the avatars the agents drive are absolutely spotlessly formed and adorned to not look out of place when they go in for action.

Thirdly, I ask the agents to look to their queues – the Na'vi are even more than virtually, they are literally and demonstrably mind readers when their queues are connected! If only our secret police at Earth had that ability with their spies and interrogators – no rebellion would ever be possible!"

Rondini: "I was aware of those points already but given their importance to our operation it does no harm being reminded of just how important they will be. You have my gratitude, Marina!"

Sundelin could sniff the opinion of the Board and she knew that they were going to decide in favour of provoking the aggression of the Namana Land Confederation: "I appreciate that we at this point of time are not about to start the inevitable armed conflict instantly after our decision now. May I express my hope that the provocation will not occur for a long, long time to come! Not until the production has leveled off and until a hefty military presence has been established."

Gemmill then uttered the fateful words: "I sense that there is an opinion common to the present members of the Board that we should give Jake Sully and his allies a provocation when the time is ripe, when there are no more easily accessible and fairly affluent mines that can safely be brought into production without trouble. Do I hear any opposition to the proposition of 'Jerry' to creating some ABC weapon for use at Pandora, to mow the resistance away if there still is some by then? Anyone in disfavour of that?"

Sundelin thought about lifting her voice against that proposition but in the end she decided against it. A too truculent stand against the expressed opinions of the CEO might be detrimental to her seat at the Board and she wasn't about risking that just for a point of mere idealism. So the word of the CEO fell: "It has been decided. Go ahead, Jerry."


	6. Rising Tension and the Casus Belli

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

* * *

**Rising Tension and the Casus Belli**

Jake continued hearing reports of sonic booms of space ferries landing and taking off, of ever more confident fishing clans brandishing more and more firearms, confrontations now often erupted into fistfigthing and even exchange of fire at one occasion. Jake saw that this was too obvious evidence of Sky People presence to ignore and decided to investigate in earnest.

Jake paid a visit to the Eymastua clan along with Neytiri, after formal greetings and gift exchanges they sat down over a meal and talked with the clan leaders. Then it was that Burulik, the Eymastua tsahik, presented the damning evidence.

"My son Ngabik'e has a mate with an Amananga sister-in-law. They not so long ago visited his in-laws there and when they came back they told me what they had seen. They had seen some people coming to the meals, tired and dirty like they had been digging in soil. And his mate found this small thing in the bushes when she went to relieve herself. It is very, very evidently a tawtute thing! She tried to ask her people about what was going on there but they didn't want to talk about it, when she presented what she had found they tried to take it away from her by force. She and her mate had to run away from the Amanangas then."

Burulik gave Jake a plastic ID-card, showing the face of a man and he read: "Seyde Tamba". Task: Mining engineer. Able with arms: Yes. Birth nation: Federation of West Africa. Family at home: No. Born Feb. 20th 2131 Health data: 0+CH4KG1-8B78 RDA ID # Pan 6 5678 A"

Jake screamed elatedly, this was the final, undeniable, unequivocal proof of RDA presence among the Amanangas. Burulik was showered with expressions of gratitude and then Jake and Neytiri left the Eymastuas as fast as politeness could allow, and hurried back to the Omatikaya Hometree, to confer with his staff. He declared in a grave voice: "This is the explanation of the funny events since the ISV 'Canopus' left. The RDA is making the clans dig their unobtanium on its behalf, giving them firearms as payment. Thereby they minimize their presence, they keep from irritating the clans undue and they build up a market for their products. We must make the clans aware of their sinister plans."

Messengers were sent around, certainly to the Amanangas, the Atoll Islanders and the Marakxalis but when presented with the evidence their olo'eytkans were intransigent. Said the Marakxali olo'eytkan Banart: "The clans at the Namana Land have joined together to protect their interests, they are free and can do as they like. We are free too and we can do as we seem fit to defend our freedom and rights, and we have found a strong friend who has helped us with means to defend our vital interests. You have founded a Namana Network of clans, we have founded an Ocean Network. Actually, the RDA people we have seen are very different from those You once described to us: They are polite, friendly and unarmed, when they come to take their grey rocks they provide us with useful stuff and then leave as soon as they have put their rocks into their big Metal Ikrans. They most certainly have never tried to influence our life style but leave us absolutely in peace. So do leave us in peace to mind our own business!"

Having this piece of news Jake sat down to think. Norm gave some council: "May be we better accept that this isn't preparing for taking over all of Pandora at all, it might simply be just honest and perfectly acceptable trade? They have finally found a product some Na'vi clans have been hungering for, so what can we do about that? Very little, I would say! Perhaps we should accept some RDA people among us we too, so we can buy some firearms more too?"

Jake replied: "Absolutely not. That is precisely what they are hoping for, an arms race. Tension would build up until a terrible war would be inescapable and then they would earn all the more by selling arms to both belligerent opponents. We are at a serious quandary, Norm. I fear what the outcome of it will be."

Jake didn't know but at the RDA Executive Board they were approaching a quandary too. Ever more clans were producing unobtanium to cover all their martial needs and felt no need for digging up more. To sell more they would have to turn up the level of perceived tension. The Board gave the Intelligence Department green light to launch the operation "Betelgeuse": provocation.

The staff at SecOps department, increasingly acting on behalf of their old and increasingly senile but very pliant commanding general Guerin now had two regiments ready for deployment at Svarog, under marine brigadier Neville Cox and colonel Isidro Cardoso Avellano. More regiments were under establishment, or the units of the unfinished regiments could be speedily ferried in to bring the two regiments now at Pandora back to force if needed.

The brigade had an administrative company, running the base amenities for the soldiers. Each of the regiments had one staff company with a rail gun, a Big Dragon transportation gunship and an unarmed observation helicopter with radio, satellite and walkie-talkie connections, under command by the regiment lieutenant colonel or the regiment major, and seven companies of five Scorpion gunships and five Samson transport helicopters each. Each company consisted of a martial component with helicopters, AMPs and soldiers, and a business component of engineers and techies.

The representatives of the RDA company had now established widespread mining contacts and a few mining stations over very many areas of Pandora, artfully avoiding clashing with the local clans – the brigade headquarter were at an uninhabited and rather barren island, the Sea Maggot Island, around which the Atoll islanders were free to fish. The local ay'olo'eyktan were frequently visited or invited to the base at Sea Maggot Island, to discuss plans and wishes of both parts. But until hostilities broke out the base was deliberately left with only a ghost staff, to not making the Atoll Islanders undue irked.

Brigadier Cox was a martial man coming from the "school of hard knocks", in this case the US Marine boot camp at Parris Island where he had been a drill sergeant once long ago. He was a man looking much like Quaritch once had looked, with glasses and a big birth mark on his left cheek, and without the scars on his head. He was under orders to always behave with restraint and have his men treat the local clanspeople with dignity, to defend themselves on their own only and only strike offensively against enemies in conjunction with their Na'vi allies. However, in cases of no special order he could take action with a very heavy hand: When Hal Nuñez, Vytautas and Ewa Iniskius came on board the ISV "Canopus" they expected to be put into cryo hibernation for the voyage to Earth, they were given injections said to be preparing them for the hibernation but actually they were lethal. The brigadier had no wish to waste load capacity of unobtanium on traitors to the company. And his emotion as to Jake Sully was one of the deepest imaginable contempt: Here was a marine who had forgotten his oath to his fatherland and his corps, a defector who ignored his Marine credo: "Semper fi"!

The messengers from the Namana Confederation of Jake noted the increasing belligerence among the clans at the islands, they were now openly talking about pushing the mainlander interlopers out of their fishing grounds once and for all. The fishing clans of both opponents clamoured ever more for the forces of their confederations to help them defend their own fishing grounds. Avatar spies of the RDA noted the rising tension and dutifully reported it.

So amid rising nervosity a dashing young man, judging from his adornments an Atoll Islander warrior, arrived at the Omatikaya Hometree. He introduced himself as Meku'rull and he behaved with all the restrained yet martial dignity expected from a warrior. Among the people standing and watching the reception were Tomas Jak'itan and Sylwanin Neytir'ite – son and daughter of the couple you-know-who…

Jake and Neytiri sat down around the dinner firepit to entertain their guest. They talked and talked, no conclusive affairs came out of it and Jake had not expected it either, building good relations between two mutually antagonistic parts is a long term project when no common enemy is present. Food was served, eaten and Jake turned to talk with other of his councillors.

Then Meku'rull leaned over to Thomas and boasted with a contemptuous smirk: "Now that the mainlanders are driven off those islands Eywa has regained her balance at long last!"

Thomas reacted with an evil glance and replied that he ought to say so to the coastal clans not him, the Omatikayas were a forest clan and had little to do with ocean fishing. Meku'rull reacted with an uppercut sending Thomas reeling, then tried to trip him into falling down into the firepit. But Thomas had trained martial arts too far to be unbalanced that easily, he quickly regained balance while parrying a belly kick and crying for help. Meku'rull then turned tail (literally) and ran into the forest.

Once out of hearing range Meku'rull took some evasive measures and then he found the radio set he had hidden in a hollow tree. He switched on and whispered: "Agent Bernardo here. Task fulfilled to the best of my ability, provocation done. Target is bruised but alive, but the Omatikayas are out to catch me so the desired effect has been attained. I request immediate evacuation. Follow my radio signal."

Jake was at once informed about what had taken place. He instantly sent out a search party for Meku'rull but his finest trackers couldn't keep track on him for long. That made Jake stop and think – the Atoll Islanders were not famed for their hunting and tracking ability on land… Only the day after they found a forest glen where a Samson gunship had landed and taken up someone – obviously that would-be assassinator. The conclusion was simple: This was a tawtute scheme.

A messenger party was sent out to their islands. But coming to their home tree they were met with olo'eytkan Kia'nak in angered sorrow, his daughter had been found dead with a knife in her rib cage, a knife with carved decorations in the Omatikayan style on the shaft. The messengers barely came away alive. They had some report to give to Jake…

The day after Jake had reports of islanders attacking Iranali'k fishers with guns blazing, crying for vengeance. Jake convened a Confederation meeting, hostilities were now running.

While the olo'eyktans were sitting and discussing measures to be taken, a Sky woman was ushered into the discussion circle. She declared: "My name is Lingu Bao, coming from the Ocean Confederation with invitations for negotiations, I am a emissary from the confederation of which the RDA employees at Pandora are most humble and faithful subjects. Our confederation offers the Namana Confederation ceasefire and negotiations for delineating borders between our member clan territories. We all detest war and we must do our best to avoid it." The case was that the executives at Earth had noted the rising tension and though they would like a lingering, low scale tribal war they saw that a massive scale conflict was on the coming. Such a big conflict was not what they desired, it would be costly and should be defused.

Jake said, with an indignant voice: "Miss Bao, may be You should start with explaining us what your agents have been up to at the Atoll Islander Hometree Island, and towards my own very son?"

The diplomat looked at him in terror. But before she could answer two males from the Mountain clan broke into the discussion circle. They had one Na'vi female tied up between them, adorned like a Marakxali. "Good lords please excuse us, I am Kxapxe and this is Talfikx, we are from the Mountain clan. We beg Your forgiveness for intruding into this solemn meeting but we have captured a female who might be interesting to us all. She sat at our dinner firepit yesterday and talked with people, saying that we ought to break out of the Namana Network – the Ocean Network would happily allow our olo'eyktan into their discussion circle. But then one of our storytellers remembered having seen her before among the Tipani clanspeople some years ago, then she was adorned like a clan I never before heard about. That was shortly after the last space ship left us and now we understood that she is a clever one. So we took her captive and here she is."

Jake gazed at the Mountain clansmen and expressed his gratitude: "Intrusions are most welcome when they give us who are to decide evidence as important as this." And he gave diplomat Lingu Bao a glance dripping with malice.

The female was brought to her knees and Neytiri took her queue and made a tsahaylu connection. The onlookers could see the two of them, the prisoner on her knees was shivering and Neytiri was very obviously in the end barely containing her anger. After some time she disconnected, sent the woman away and spoke with a very angry voice.

"Brothers and sisters, now listen! The true name of this female is Naraporn Sarasinithat, originally from an Earth clan named Thailand, she is an avatar permanently transferred into her blue body, she is a negotiator and one of the sly talkers from the RDA company, trying to make clans leave the Namana Network. I could find out that it is all a plan to make Na'vi clans buy lots of Sky people weapons and pay for them with lots and lots of grey rocks. I found out that the almost murder of our Thomas Jak'itan is part of it and so is the finish murder of Yalu'us Ngonga'ite. They want to make us fear each other to make us buy more weapons. They want to take over all of our world and let us do the killing of ourselves. Our brothers and sisters of many clans have been fooled into it by those treacherous tawtutes! They have even killed three of their own kin for no other reason than that they didn't want to take the work of bringing them back to Earth – the Iniskius two and Hal Nuñez. Their big kunsips are on their way down to this world at this very moment to make war with us!"

She turned at diplomat Lingu Bao and said with a voice freezing with contempt: "So miss Bao, please return to Your den up in the sky now and remain there, and tell your leaders that we of the Namana Network are going to root out all those tawtute places you have put up down here, and take those clans into our network! They will happily join us when they have seen Your treachery!"

Diplomat Lingu Bao left the assembly in a big hurry and ran to the Samson she had arrived in. Once up in the air she reported to her superior, Manolo Kontarides at the Sea Maggot Island: "Our cover has been blown, agent Sarasinithat has been captured and everything she knew has been pulled out of her through the queue connection. Now the Namana Confederation will be on the warpath so alarm our clan allies and send them assistance right away."

Agents took contact with the various clan leaders at once, and they were told this story: "The Omatikayas and their friends have been contacted by our messengers, but their offers of peace have been rejected. They want to make war at our Network! They are coming at you soon – but we have sent for strong Sky people forces to join in the battle as we promised you!"

But what was coming at first wasn't a war party but some messengers. They told a very different story: About tawtutes hiding among them, making them buy firearms just to make them dig up and sell ever more grey rocks. That the son of the sixth Toruk Makto had been attempted killed and the daughter of the Atoll Islanders olo'eytkan had been murdered to incite strife, to make them purchase even more tawtute weaponry. But the clans turned deaf ears to those stories. War!


	7. The Guerilla War

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

* * *

**The Guerilla War**

A powerful war party was sent south to take on the Amananga clan first of all. But brigadier Cox had guessed that the first onslaught would be directed against them and he had had time to send in strong reinforcements – one of the two regiments… while the other regiment held on to the sea.

So the Battle at the Stone Covered Well was a disastrous failure to the Namana Confederated forces. The ikran and pa'li riders met marines in dug down positions and were mowed down, afterwards those fleeing in defeat were pursued relentlessly by Amananga ikran riders and RDA gunships, massacring the fleeing and disorganized warriors. Afterwards the RDA diplomats ran rampant over the Namana Land, offering peace with the Ocean Confederation and membership if they felt like. Most significantly they were offered peace with the New RDA which was a very different thing than evil Old RDA, or so they said at least, and they were offered firearms to protect their newfound freedom from the Omatikayan repression – in return for some unobtanium of course…

Jake was sitting up in the New Hometree and he was very depressed. At such times it was good to have Neytiri on hand, she was good at cheering him up by reminding him that Eywa would surely come to their aid like last time if seriously needed. He had been told that the Iranali'k and the Kilvan clans had accepted the RDA offer of peace and half a dozen more looked like wavering. One more defeat like this and the whole Namana Land Confederation would be torn to pieces. So which measures were now available to him?

While he was thus sitting and pondering his muse came to him, as always cheering him up when he was feeling down. And more to the point, she often came with intelligent ideas, like today. Neytiri could so to say smell it from his body odour when he was in need of a good idea. She gave him encouraging words also now, and she ushered in those two she had found out had been thinking deep.

It was the two lovebirds of Owen MacGregor and Tran Thi Dung Ly who could provide him with a good cue. He had once been the book-keeper of dr. Augustine, now he was one of the story-tellers, specializing in old stories from Earth. He was a Scotsman and proud of it, if asked he could name his genealogy back to big men like Rob Roy. He was not looking like the big and burly stereotype of a Highlander – his human body had been small, slim and dark-haired – but he was taciturn and frugal like a good Scot. His love of history had brought him in contact with the agronomy scientist who had been working as gardener assistant in the hydroponic plant where a little food was still grown. Tran Thi Dung was one of the late arriving avatar drivers, i.e. after the Great Battle, but in her modest and graceful way she had earned the respect of very many around her. She was very oriental in her manners and she was very much at home in the history of her home land at Earth.

Owen began: "Jake, we two have been discussing this last disaster and we have come to a conclusion, a strategy we recommend out of experiences from Earth history."

Tran Thi Dung: "My ancestors in Vietnam repeatedly had this problem. The strategy they won by, again and again, is the strategy we must follow too: The hallowed old guerrilla warfare. Then we can take them out in small pieces by hit-and-run, thus we can tire them and wear them down until we can attack in full power. Thus we can rally all of this moon against them, we can bring over to our side all the clans one by one while they fight their battles here at Namana Land. Another advantage of guerrilla is that we can allow clans to go in and out of the confederation – apparently! While they pretend to be joining the RDA lackeys they can ask for firearms and get them, and send them over to our side, for us to use later on. What do you think about this plan, Jake and Neytiri?"

Jake: "Wonderful idea! You are hereby appointed to my council ring! Agree Neytiri?" She nodded. She had talked with them about this before today.

Owen was unusually eloquent today: "Some more advices Jake. Guerilla warfare is the recipe for a long and bloody struggle but in the end it is the strategy with the most likely success. The plains-dwelling clans should withdraw into the forest for out at the open they are vulnerable to air attacks. All clans must leave their respective hometrees at once, they are too conspicuous targets for rail gun bombardment, and disperse in the jungle. We can leave a strong detachment to defend the Tree of Souls but I strongly doubt that they are going to attack that, given how they need their na'vi allies in this conflict, they will not condone such an attack. Since they are loath to attack Tree of Souls they will be hunting for another symbol of resistance: Toruk Makto, i.e. you. You should never move anywhere without a strong guard, and your beloved ones and your councillors should move along with you to avoid falling in their hands. Another point is that this will be a war of propaganda, we must keep miss Sarasinithat alive at all costs, her job will be to give evidence to those clans we have defeated, to make them join our Confederation afterwards. Make sure that we pull rockets out of all wrecks we can find, we need them to shoot down gunships and defence towers when we attack the bases."

Jake noted their advices and acted upon them. The defecting clans were contacted and they explained that very correctly were more scared than rebellious. They were asked to stay out of the conflict while asking for weaponry – to be smuggled over to the confederated clans afterwards…

Brigadier Cox was meanwhile in an upbeat mood. The enemy looked to be reeling, so now the task ahead was simply to win over the remaining opposing clans one by one. He was having gilded dreams in the night, may be he would be able to secure the appointment to commanding general when that empty-brained fool Guerin finally had no more use? One space ferry after another was sent up to Svarog moon, brimming with unobtanium ore. The reports coming through the wormhole from the Board were plainly speaking very favourable. Best of all, he was told that a virus now had been developed in an RDA lab, a culture was now in the orbital station waiting for an ISV to be consigned on its way to Svarog. By the time of arrival the stock would have become so large that it could be filled into gas bombs. So come five years from now and the na'vi could be sent down into the same hole as the Aztecs in 1520…

The next months were wearisome. Jake and his close family and councillors were continuously moving from clan to clan, always encouraging the belligerent and cheering up the flagging spirits. Jake had no satellite surveillance system to help him with organizing the campaigns any more but he had Kim Chae Tai, once the avatar driver specializing in cartography and now the oracle answering all questions about where at Pandora everything was. She had once been an immigrant to Canada from Korea and had at the Augustine Research Station been known as the woman so very prickly about her problem in life – her obesity – that she was known to take vicious revenge with slander and vandalism against everyone she perceived bullying her for her body shape. To her more than almost anyone else among the drivers her slim and toned avatar body was a godsend, so now she was well adapted and eminently trustable. So Jake and Kim studied the maps of Pandora with deep care, supported by Neytiri's knowledge about the habits of various clans and Norm's report about their present inclinations, he was almost like the "foreign secretary to the Confederation".

Again and again small war parties of clanspeople of the Ocean Confederation and a helicopter or two were ambushed by confederated guerrillas in the forest, while striking fast hit-and-run raids out on the plain ravaging mining projects. Meanwhile Derek Lester Gill was all the time gaining fame as the "admiral of the Na'vi navy" – he assembled boat and ikran raids by night at the numerous small and large islands out west and where miners were active, and managed to turn the clans of the small islands out west over to the Namana Land Confederation one by one. Soon as the few miners and soldiers had been driven off one island the prisoner of war of ultimate significance, a cowed agent Sarasinithat, was displayed to present her evidence, gluing one more clan into loyality with the Namana Land Confederation. Clans without unobtanium deposits worth speaking about in their territory were not forgotten either, they were brought into the Confederation for the sake of completeness, open holes in a network would be weak points...

Brigadier Cox was now facing a dilemma, he had to strengthen his hold over the islands or allowing them to slip out of the Ocean Confederation, revealing the Ocean Confederation as the sham it really was at the core. So they had to move parts of the regiment at Namana Land out at the islands to strengthen their control out there, and took personal charge of the operations at the islands. Colonel Cardoso Avellano in command at the Amananga garrison ordered a rather desperate move.

Eyes in the space that all the time kept watch over Pandoran surface gave snapshots of Namana Land, revealing an interesting pattern. They could see an animal flock moving so fast that they had to be flying beasts. The funny affair was that this flock moved straight from one area to another, and everywhere it went a large flock of beings condensed soon after. And when such a constellation appeared it always later turned out to be a Na'vi war party attacking units in the forest. The analyst took his results to his superior, Julia Ragimberti, head of RDA Intelligence section, Analytical office. It dawned to the sharp mind of Ragimberti what that flying flock was – it had to be Jake Sully himself and his entourage, flying around to organize the guerrilla war! She passed the information on to colonel Cardoso Avellano.

The colonel recognized the information for what it was: One sterling opportunity to strike a knock out blow at the enemy and he informed Cox about his plan beforehand. He sent an entire company, along with all the ikran riders the vassal clan of the Black Cliff clan had available, to the position the satellite photographs told him was likely. He left only a company weak and worn out after many hard jungle campaigns at the Amananga base.

Jake and his close people were sitting over a meal in the early morning when a scout flute suddenly was sounded. And the scout on guard added an "ALARM!" to it. All were on their feet at once, they had trained for such an attack, in the full knowledge that it was likely sooner or later, and everyone knew what now to do. Children and Jake's staff members ran into the forest and hid in trees and behind rocks while warriors took up position in the forest around the firepit.

The arriving war party went into position, the helicopters hovering above to take down any ikrans trying to attack while Black Cliff ikran riders landed in the glen. They found an abandoned breakfast site and little else – until arrows fired from the forest struck eight Amanangas. On Jake's order the hunters aimed for legs and arms not the vital parts of the torso – he intended to turn the people of the Black Cliff into trusting friends in the time to come. The other Black Cliff warriors turned towards the forest but for the one bodyguardsman they hit five more Amanangas were struck. The rest mounted their ikrans and took to the air and then the warriors hidden in the tree tops took action. Their rockets were aimed at the gunships hovering, and suddenly five of the six gunships were struck. The one still managing to stay airborne and the one not hit turned tail back to base. The wrecks were immediately raided for their rockets and one soldier was pulled out alive, to join the now swelling prisoner camp. The wounded Black Cliff warriors were taken care of soon after and let loose – Jake was busy at work with "turning" the Amanangas...

Colonel Cardoso Avellano was shocked to see that only two gunships returned, one of them with a malfunctioning left rotor, and only a handful of ikran riders returned from the assault. He consolidated the forces into a single, strong company, and realized that he didn't have force for any new assault.

Now that the marine force was reeling, the confederation made its move. Some Eymastua ikran riders struck out with Jake proudly riding his toruk at their van, he took agent Sarasinithat at his back and flew to the Amananga hometree in the early dawn. She was then made to tell Lazafnu, the Amananga olo'eytkan, her story – the result was immediate: The Amanangas turned against their "benefactors". The company defending the base suddenly discovered themselves under siege, they had to immediately evacuate and told the other company currently out on small operations at Namana Land to immediately abort their operations and head to Marakxali Island to save their lives. As soon as the marines were airborne Jake called out at the warriors to empty the weapon arsenals at once and he was right, hardly were they emptied before a rail gun bombardment pulverized the Amananga base. The Na'vi Confederation had driven the RDA off Namana Land.

Jake and his admiral Gill were now facing the problem how to attack a fortified island over sea. The guerrilla land war was at end, the amphibious war at sea was now beginning.


	8. The Na'vi Navy at War

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

* * *

**The "Na'vi Navy" at War**

Now it was the turn of brigadier Cox to feel blue. Eleven months of fighting had begun gloriously but ended with getting kicked off the mainland of the Namana Land. The garrison at the moon of Svarog was getting empty of recruits to be filled into the ranks down at Pandora, and the virus bombs were still almost five years away. He studied the lists of soldiers dead, crippled, hospitalized or missing, how many gunships and guns were left, and the general supply situation. His forces were worn, the situation currently stood at two weak regiments that perhaps should have been joined to make a full one, but soon an ISV was about to deliver an all new regiment at the moon of Svarog, to be delivered down to Pandora after a period of readying.

But they still retained the control over the islands east of Namana Land, over the Gargoyle Fish Land continent east of that, over the North Land up north, and the Nongona Land continent facing the islands west of Namana Land continent captured by the confederation, and the smaller and larger islands between the two controlled continents were at least mainly friendly or neutral. The mines in those areas were at full production and gave good profits still. He was told by his chief of staff that he was not to forget that he was working for a commercial company, so if he was able to cut costs by cutting losses then he should take that opportunity. "Why not sit down here and wait, mining is going on and giving good profit so we can bide our time, and in five years we can go to the offensive once again. The Board will not make trouble as long as we are turning profit, and the Na'vi can't trouble us for as long as we rule the air – they have no way of getting assault parties ashore at our islands."

So for the next weeks he only sent his helicopters out for skirmishes to protect islander fishermen from competing Iranali'k fishermen at those barren islands where fishing was good. A couple of times the helicopter crews indulged in some "Viking raids" along with their na'vi allies against the Iranali'k fishing sheds, but they kept away from danger and never suffered much. The Confederates at the mainland clearly would dearly have enticed them into a major invasion but Cox knew that so was absolutely out of the question.

And then the marvellous day came, when the mood of Cox brightened up several degrees. A new, complete regiment was landed at Svarog and soon after transferred to Pandora. It was deployed at the Nongona Land with a detachment at Gargoyle Fish Land. Quite a few of the soldiers who had taken injuries at the skirmishes at Namana Land were starting to heal too and could return to the ranks.

Jake was not quite as cheerful as the brigadier now. The na'vi at Namana Land had started a much needed recuperation but they couldn't stay satisfied with that. Even more anxious he became when Maeve O'Leary came to him along with her husband – now mate – Shawn, and told him that they had managed to hack the cargo manifestos of the ISVs on way. They were the computer hackers of the now almost completely abandoned Augustine Station – save for such vitals as the listening and decoding facility. It was to be one regiment a year – a seriously tough order to beat. But the even worse piece of news was the weapon due in less than five years: A virus culture able to decimate the whole na'vi population Pandora-wide but leave humans sound and healthy. Suddenly they had a relentless deadline to struggle against.

So he had somehow to crack that nut of how to get ashore at defended coastlines. Jake turned his attention from the East front, where there was a wide piece of water between Namana Land and the heavily defended archipelago and Marakxali Island, over to the West front where his admiral Gill was still "island hopping" from island to island. West of the westernmost island was a broad ocean basin and then the quite large Nongona Land, while not quite so large as Namana Land there was still more than hundred and fifty clans there. Since none of the unobtanium deposits there where neither nearly the size of those at the main sites nor so easily worked, those clans had never been heavily irritated by mining activity, warlike as some of those clans were. Some agitation among them should be able to rouse them to join the Na'vi confederacy. West of the Nongona Land there was a wide stretch of ocean and some small islands Jake knew little about, west of them again was a new wide ocean basin and then they were approaching the eastern neighbouring continent of the Marakxali Island, the Gargoyle Fish Land. The seventy clans on that smallish continent were known to be notoriously peaceful but Jake had heard reports that there were some RDA mining colonies at this land too.

Gill did as he was expected to, Nongona Land was infiltrated, propagandized and won over, and for a change all the local clans took the side of the Na'vi Confederation. The Campaign for Nongona Land was comparatively light, colonel Cardoso Avellano withdrew to Gargoyle Fish Land, not wanting to repeat the wearisome and doomed guerrilla war at Namana Land for a number of not overly productive mines. They had never had a local, dependably loyal ally like the Amananga clan at Nongona Land. There had never been much use for any without any large and valuable deposit.

When news of that broke, Ngizino the olo'eytkan of the Ice Hunter clan at North Land, sat down and calculated power politics and two plus two makes four anywhere in the Universe. So he politely but in no uncertain terms asked the RDA company and miners there to leave since they obviously were loosing the campaign for Pandora, which they did. An ikran-riding messenger soon after arrived at Namana Land, seeking out Jake's hideout. When the messenger finally came face to face with him, he declared the loyalty of the North Land clans, of whom the Ice Hunters were the out of scale largest and most powerful, to the Na'vi Confederation. And in the next weeks he learned that the RDA representatives had been driven out of the stations in the wilderness of smaller and larger archipelagos and a few small continents too far out there, between Nongona Land and Gargoyle Fish Land continents. There were no large garrisons there and little if any fighting.

Jake couldn't believe his luck, two great prizes and a big load of small ones had fallen into his lap with little fighting. But still, the RDA forces had concentrated on defending their five wealthiest mines: at the Atoll archipelago, at Marakxali Island and at Gargoyle Fish Land. To get to them the Na'vi would unavoidably have to cross open ocean, whether from the east or the west.

Jake also started to discuss with Norm and Neytiri a more long term risk, what was to happen after the desired end of human presence at Pandora. Jake put Norm a problem to ponder: "I ask you to realize that until 1st Human – Na'vi War there had never been large and permanent political structures at Pandora. Short term alliances between many clans and long-lasting amicable relations between a few clans have been present but never before a confederation spanning the entire moon. They haven't succeeded with anything such at Earth either… We should be desperate to create some understanding between all clans, so that no new RDA, ADR or whatever can wiggle in again and raise a new conflict to profiteer from."

Norm proposed: "May be we should accept that an all-Pandora confederation is simply a too large entity, a number of smaller confederations in cordial understanding with each other could be better. We could establish some sort of United Na'vi Clans Organization, as a forum for mediation of clan conflicts and to control all dealings with humans coming down to us. I envision a 'UNCO Council' regularily meeting below the Tree of Souls with representatives from every large or small confederation, with expert committees on rituals, on stories to be remembered, on conflict resolution, on technologies, on extra-Pandora contact and you name it."

Neytiri then said: "Norm, I like your idea. All clans should be free and live like their traditions say but cooperating to keep peace over all of this world. And as an Omatikaya I like the idea of a common meeting ground for all the clan networks at the Tree of Souls, it will give us great prestige!" A glance at a smiling Mo'at indicated agreement – the impending and the coming tsahik had probably discussed this beforehand and with Norm… and when Neytiri and Mo'at agreed about something then few Omatikayas would disagree and not many other Na'vi clans either. Mo'at was good at influencing through by-roads and Jake was very well aware of that fact.

Jake concluded: "I will then propose that a Namana Land Confederation is formed after the war has ended, consisting of a big land along with nearby islands, like a Northern Land Confederation, a Gargoyle Fish Land Confederation, a Nongona Confederation… All those confederations can then send one emissary to sit and talk away disagreements under the Tree of Souls. We can then declare the forests around the Tree of Souls for special hunting and foraging ground set aside for feeding the people coming to those meetings."

Jake rose from the company of Norm and returned to more immediate problems, Neytiri followed him close by as always. He called admiral Derek Lester Gill to him to have a talk, the man had been a marine biologist while an avatar. He was deeply marked by many expeditions at sea while a student at Earth: He was a grizzled seaman known for his deep knowledge of the seas of Pandora – earning him the admiration of coastal clans – and his salty language which was the delight of the avatar team linguist, now he came up to Jake with his characteristic waddling sea dog gait. He was known to take offence with his common nickname "The Gill" – referring to his fisherman background, so Jake spoke to him by his preferred nickname "Deke".

Jake told him: "Deke, to finally evict humans from Pandora we need to cross the sea. We will have to do it soon for the more we wait the stronger will our enemy become. And in less than four years they are likely to try to infect us all with a deadly virus, killing most of us if we can't get them off before that. So is there some battle ruse we can come up to defeat them?"

Gill: "Naval warfare has darned few ways of trickery, and ya go lookin' for 'em at open sea! Ya see mate, at open sea we really are a ne'er-do-well crew, no matter how tough we are and how green they are at sea. Ya see mate, they rule the air. We simply got no gizmo to run the top o'er that tech gulf 'tween us and 'em – but we gotta do it if we wanna do amphi raids. I've tried to woo 'em into goin' invadin' Namana Land so we could get 'em in a fix on land but they have always sniffed rat so far, 'cept for puny pillage raids. We better wait and see, keep a-ponderin' mate!"

"We sure will, Deke!" Jake answered.

"Txeke'ngill is quite a man!" Neytiri commented afterwards.

But a few days later a young warrior of the Western Islands clan came to Jake's Omatikaya Hometree and asked for an audience with Toruk Makto. He was let in to the alcove in the humongous tree where Jake was right then sitting and talking with Gill. He did a reverential greeting and spoke up.

"Oel ngati kameie, Toruk Makto Jakesully and pirogue eyktan Txeke'ngill, I am Ninikit, warrior of the Western Island clan. I have heard that it is a problem to get across the sea without being shot by the metal ikrans of the tawtute. I have an idea how we can get ashore at islands unseen. We may fail but we will have the advantage of surprise…"

"Speak young man, we two are both listening!"

"In our seas it is not uncommon that big lumps of kelp and seagrass are floating around with the sea currents. What if we hide some floats below such lumps, floating in the sea until we come close to the island where the tawtutes are hiding."

"Now this is the idea I have been waiting for, young man! Deke, we must at once set about making ready for this!"

So in the night two weeks later some canoes towed five floats out to the sea from the west, to a point in the sea where Gill with his knowledge of sea currents had pointed out sea currents letting them drift across the sea to the Sea Maggot Island where the main garrison of the archipelago regiment was located, close by the island where the Atoll Islander Hometree was and the three small islands where the deposits of ore were. They didn't drift exactly as the current went but at a small angle to it, a little paddling was done to let it drift the correct direction and assisted by the rudders pushed down through the flooring of the floats, to make them strand at the right island. This garrison island had a long spit where it was possible to wade ashore and a small forest at the tip of the peninsula where it was possible to take cover until time of action was at hand. The five men on each float were well armed and equipped, not only with weapons but also with food and water to keep fit for fight after several days at sea. The night after the first five there were five floats more, and again for five days more to come.

The result of the infiltration was that 175 warriors in the end came ashore, and facing a weak regiment because three companies of its force were defending Marakxali Island, in short Cox had three strong companies at his immediate command. One of the floats was manned by na'vi SOLDIERS, trained by Jake, Jeff and Trudy, trained at not only those modern arms the Confederation could muster but also with the elementaries about those they might be able to capture. Jeff was among them himself. Meanwhile a large war party of ikran riders was massing close to the shoreline closest to the Atoll archipelago.

And then one night, when everyone were rested and everything was well prepared, it was time to take action. The radio set was taken out of its water tight oilskin and switched on. The battery was of course weak so the message was made short – also to not set off the alarm in the base.

Jeff gave his call sign: "Calling airport! Calling airport! Island Gang here. Do you copy?" "Airport here. I hear you loud and clear." Angie replied. "Our message is as follows: ACTION! ACTION! ACTION! Island Gang out." Then the warriors set out towards the base.

They crept on to the six defence towers from different directions and aimed their rockets. Suddenly all the six defence towers exploded almost simultaneously. The warriors then ran into the camp, knife and pistol in hand and bow and spear slung on back, with their na'vi eyes they had an advantage over humans in the dark of the night. In the confusing fight that erupted many marines were gunned down or stabbed but in the end brigadier Cox managed to organize the defence. But then the ikran riders from the Namana Land arrived by air and then the defence of the base collapsed.

Jeff now ran to the rail gun at the base and yelled: "Fast now! We are out of time already!" He fully expected the captured base to be rail gun bombarded like had taken place at the Amananga base but a few shells he could at least throw out before so happened. He didn't take time with checking up the system first, he just geared up the dynamo giving the needed electrical supply and switched on the aiming system while one of his ay'eyktan loaded the gun and another directed the warriors into the arsenal to plunder the weapon stash. Jeff hurriedly acquired the targets of the bases at Gargoyle Fish Land and Marakxali Island and fired within five minutes after taking over the gun, even while there still were people desperately trying to defend the warehouse and the main Central Command Communication tower.

At the Gargoyle Fish Land base sirens were by then blaring wildly. Marines were running hither and tither, some to the gunships while other ran to the anti-aircraft rocket batteries and other to their appointed sandbagged positions, and five of them ran to the rail gun to demolish the Atoll base so that it shouldn't fall into the hands of the enemy – but then BOOOM the barrack went up into flames with a deafening explosion and a huge flash of light. The marines at the rail gun made hurriedly ready for firing – and BOOOM the gunship hangar and AMP garage was atomized. They loaded the gun – and were incinerated when a new shell hit the gun they were struggling with getting into action. Then the rail gun at the Atoll Island base went silent.

Jeff had had to abort the bombardment simply because someone in the CCC tower still holding out had had the presence of mind to switch off the computer, so that the rail gun out in the courtyard suddenly went blind, the computer had been destroyed when they surrendered. The hundred or so soldiers who finally surrendered where herded into the barrack and locked in until they could be brought to the big prisoner-of-war camp at Namana Land by boat.

The assault at the Atoll Islander base had been a brilliant success. Cox was found mortally wounded afterwards, Trudy – who had been next-in-command of the ikran riders – decided to forget discipline for a short moment and told the unconscious and bleeding officer softly in his ear: "Now this is for those defenceless people you simply ordered the murder of, they got ill paid for their loyalty towards Earth! And killing such nice, old, devout Christians like the Iniskius husband and wife!" And she put a bullet through his temple.

Colonel Cardoso Avellano suddenly found himself the leader of a severely weakened regiment and the Atoll Island regiment had been terribly mauled too. Cardoso Avellano consolidated his units, he had only twelve gunships and twenty AMPs left, and the equivalent of just five full companies, some seven hundred marines in all. A desperate message was sent up to Svarog base about the disastrous situation.

Later that day Jake Sully mounted his big toruk, took an increasingly willing agent Sarasinithat at his back and some bodyguards in his entourage along for the ride, and they flew to the Hometree Island of Atoll Islanders. Olo'eytkan Kia'nak was shocked beyond words when he learned how he had been deceived, his defection from the so-called "Ocean Confederation" and his accession to the Na'vi Confederation was then a done deal between two heartbeats. Afterwards they went to Marakxali Island and discovered that the RDA garrison had been evacuated, witnessed by stunned Marakxali clanspeople. The Marakxalis were astonished too to learn what had really happened and what the true plans of the Sky People had been, when their olo'eytkan Banart learned how he had been deceived too he didn't loose much time with switching allegiance either.

End of the day was that Jake and his trusted people could take to the wings back to the Omatikaya Hometree, happy in the knowledge that only a severely mauled Gargoyle Fish base now stood between them and total victory. All the next day went into celebrations of the victors, especially Jeff Enright who had shown bravery and a tactical acumen rightly worth a man from Royal Marines. Trudy was given honour too, she was promoted to the equivalent of captain, and Derek Gill named the inventive Ninikit his "vice admiral", he came back to his clan's hometree proudly wearing a brilliant blue armband.


	9. Endgame

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

* * *

**Endgame**

Cardoso Avellano had a busy day after the end of the bombardment. He had to arrange the mess hall into a makeshift barrack, the small repair workshop would have to do as a hangar and garage too. He noted with happiness that the defence towers and the anti-air rocket batteries were undamaged. Luckily in the evening a space ferry came down, unloading two gunships more and some specialists, and brought up the most injured soldiers, plus the ordinary load of unobtanium of course.

But even if he had fourteen gunships now plus two Big Dragons, offensive action was clearly out of the question. He would have to stay satisfied with defending the Gargoyle Fish Land base. Even worse, the mining engineer reported that among some of the clans at Gargoyle Fish Land there were some who had started wondering whether the Sky People were so invincibly strong after all. The engineer countered the grumblings by increasing the servings for his workers, from good to lavish. There were even some seniors among the clans who started wondering whether or not they were threatening Eywas balance of nature with regaling the workers to so sumptuous portions. But for the main part the clans at Gargoyle Fish Land still stayed loyal. It didn't hurt that Avellano Cardoso always tried his very utmost to keep on the best of terms with Ozotx, olo'eytkan of the Gargoyle Fish clan, the most powerful of the clans at the continent by the same name.

Jake and his councillors scratched their heads with trying to come up with a plan to capture this last base. The base was heavily defended with defence towers and air rocket batteries, they found that out the hard way when scouts tested the base. But they also found out that they didn't try to contest the waters any more – in other words it wouldn't be too problematic to put war parties ashore. Another factor was the local clans, they were known to be peaceful and not good raw material for warriors, they would likely cooperate with anyone strong.

Some aerial dogfights took place and the ikran riders regularily lost out to the gunships but the power of attrition was by now decidedly in favour of the Confederation. Half a year after the fall of Atoll Island base there was only one operational gunship left – a Big Dragon, plus one other Big Dragon awaiting the delivery of an essential part from the factory at Svarog moon, and a Scorpion and a Samson down for repair after taking damage in dogfights. Then one day a canoe waving a white flag came ashore, thus said the diplomat who waded ashore:

"I am Uzikiti, emissary from the Na'vi Confederation. We know that You have only a single kunsip left, it is big and strong but not unbeatable. So do You really think you can defend Gargoyle Fish Land until the next ISV arrives in three months? You better realize how rotten Your chances are and surrender. You will be given treatment as the Geneva Convention says, we know what it says. We can avoid a bloody battle and we should."

"Your demand for surrender is refused. We have powerful air and ground defences, our air defences have burnt your banshee riders on occasion so You should know."

Jake had actually not expected any else reply so the second part of the plan he had arranged for the endgame at Gargoyle Fish Land was now put into motion. He and his councillors had made headquarter at what had been Atoll Island base. His spies told him about flagging spirit among the marines and workers who had to be "bought" with ever sweeter "goodies" to stay loyal. The na'vi now owned the waters so it shouldn't be hard to put ashore a sizable war party. So perhaps Cardoso Avellano was more than a little foolhardy?

Jake sent canoe load after canoe load with infiltrators on to the Gargoyle Fish Land by night. Once strong enough to force a clan to hide them they started to ambush soldiers and miners walking in the forest, and to vandalize defence towers and anti air batteries around the base. The colonel forbade any venturing outside the base perimeters for the sake of security – bringing mining activity to a standstill and further alienating the clans.

Then up came the Na'vi diplomat again, about to put to action the third part of Jake's plan. "You now have only remnants left of your defences – and we destroy them faster than you can repair them. We will give you a last chance to surrender, don't waste it! We offer a full day ceasefire, from sunup to sundown tomorrow, so we can demonstrate our power if you agree."

"Agreed."

"We then ask you to march your soldiers to your parade ground tomorrow after morning signal and breakfast to receive our warriors visiting you."

The morning after all the 316 soldiers fit for duty were mustered and then marched from the mess hall to the parade ground. Outside the perimeter they saw some warriors coming together. Apprehension was high among the soldiers for what they now were going to behold.

Suddenly someone called out: "Kumpongu! Nekut si!" ("Unit! Make ranks!" – Line up!) One warrior marched out in front of them and called out: "Nari si!" ("Make eye" – Attention!) He then ordered: "Kä si!" ("Make walk!" – March!) and pointed at the RDA marines standing in ranks. In through the gate came about 250 na'vi warriors maching, in perfect order if very little garment. One of the warriors proudly bearing a broad brown armband with embroideries was named by the na'vi as Trutytsakon. Together with the one with the big white armband marched a muscular female warrior wearing a smaller white armband, carrying a pale blue banner with yellow embroideries. Arriving in front of the marines the leading warrior put up his hand and barked: "Ftang!" (Stop!) They stopped, the yellow armbanded male warrior gave command: "Wintxu tsko!" ("Show bow!" – Present arms!) and all the warriors took bows or guns off their shoulders and held them out. He then turned around and faced the colonel, he put his knife to his face with a rigid movement, Cardoso Avellano acknowledged his military salute with hand to his cap. The commanding warrior then turned back to his men and gave order: "Tsurokx si!" ("Do rest!" – At ease!) and the warriors took a more relaxed pose.

The commanding warrior then walked up to Cardoso Avellano with a very military gait, gave the na'vi equivalent of a formal handshake – a little bow forward and his fingers to his heart, with eyes fixed on his opponent – and then greeted with a handshake. Then he said in passable English: "Kumpongu eyktan Zingitar reports, sir! By rank equivalent I think You can call me colonel, sir! You can also greet my next-in-command, olo'kumpongu eyktan Anikitet (he pointed at the female warrior with the banner, she also gave a formal greeting), in your speaking she is major by rank. We hope our show of force has convinced You to surrender, we are primarily a peaceful people who dislike blood shed in vain. But please do realize that the force now seen is only a small part of what is present here at Gargoyle Fish Land (actually it was a big part of it but Cardoso Avellano didn't need to know that…) and more is readily available if we have to bring it in. We sincerely hope that You understand what is in Your best interest, colonel! Should You decide to surrender, You can send an emissary to any hometree at this continent, waving a white flag. Nothing bad will happen to You then, you will then shortly be contacted by our representative and then surrender negotiations will take place."

Zingitar then turned to his men and did the same procedure once again, and marched them out of the base. They marched into the forest and vanished.

That night was a night of much heartbreak and little sleep in the garrison. The discussion turned back and forth, the warriors in the forest were now out of their agreed ceasefire and made some token noisy night attacks to stress their power and weaken the resolve to withstand in the base. They discussed a lot with the people up at the moon of Svarog, and finally Cardoso Avellano took the word: "We have seen what they are able to in the field, we have seen that they are not merely wild warriors – when so is order of the day they can be highly disciplined SOLDIERS. And as colonel Zingitar said, they very likely have more force up their sleeve – figuratively speaking – if they need. I have talked with the main station at Svarog and what they say is that they have very little available for us down here. We still have months to wait for the next space ferry arrival, I can't understand how we can possibly hold out until then. I hope all of you agree with me."

Next morning a bed linen was given the task to work as a parley banner. The colonel and his staff walked with it flying in the wind to the closest clan's hometree, the Gargoyle Fish hometree, politely greeted Ozotx the local clan olo'eytkan, he answered in kind and then they sat down waiting. In something like an hour Uzikiti the diplomat and major Zingitar arrived. It was Uzikiti who took the word:

"Our surrender terms are simple.

Firstly, You must call down a space ferry to bring You and Your men up, leaving all Your hardware equipment here with us and make ready for departure in four days. If You prefer to wait until the big space ship arrives, we will demand to be left with that cargo too.

Secondly, we demand that You send this space ferry to the Kilvan clan hometree, that is where the prisoner-of-war camp is located if you don't know it already, to take them up. They have been well treated, there are about five hundred of them so you may have to go back and forth some times. We ask you to call your spies and agents otherwise at Pandora to join them there too, should they be discovered after You have left they will be promptly executed.

Thirdly and lastly, we demand an opportunity to broadcast to the leaders of the RDA company and the general public at Earth alike, for everyone to see and behold that is, the message that this second attempted conquest of Pandora has been a failure, so will the third be too, and the fourth and the fifth and the … And our emissary must be allowed to return to Pandora unharmed.

This today is the factual surrender, the ceremonial surrender will take place when your space ferry arrives to bring You up to the Space. Jake Sully will then arrive here to receive your formal surrender. So I presume that it will be an occasion for formal uniforms for you too."

"Sad to say, our gala uniforms went up in smoke when a rail gun shell struck the barrack building."

The colonel complied with all the other demands. A show made for television at Earth was agreed upon, and one of the councillors – Shawn O'Leary – was appointed to go up to Svarog to recite it. And a formal letter was drawm up, signed with big letters of Jake and others – including Neytiri and Mo'at with their very clumsy signatures – addressed to the Board of the Ressource Development Administration, he will ask to talk with them in person through your wormhole, it will be vital to avoid a repetition and a big epidemic. The space ferry came down and made ready for evacuation.

Then everything was ready for departure. The marines fell into ranks at the flagpole where the white RDA banner flew. The Kumpongu came marching out of the wood again and some ikran riding na'vi arrived at the parade ground of the base. Suddenly a big flock of flying creatures appeared over the tree tops, among others a huge red and orange one. One of the flyers already on the ground grabbed a drum he had brought along, drummed it to catch the attention of everyone present, and called out: "The sixth toruk makto, Jakesully the olo'eyktan of the Omatikaya clan and head of the Namana Land Confederation, is now landing!" Some other musicians took out their trumpets, lined up in ranks and blew a fanfare.

Colonel Cardoso Avellano commanded his men to present arms and Zingitar ordered: "Wintxu meuia!" (Show honour!) and pointed to the flagpole. The kumpongu lined up in two rows like an alley, leading from the landing zone the flagpole. Jake landed his toruk at the designated zone, with Neytiri and Norm shortly behind. They then dismounted, Jake was dressed in the formal decorated collar of an olo'eytkan, the golden and embroidered armband of a military commander and a black cape with an toruk embroidered on under the collar, fresh from the Omatikayan "big mother loom" for the occasion. Jake walked with slow, majestic steps towards Zingitar and faced him, Zingitar gave his military salute with his knife to his face and Jake did likewise in recognition of a job well done. Jake then walked slowly up to colonel who gave him his salute with hand to his cap, and Jake gave him his own salute in recognition of a worthy enemy. He then pronounced, slowly and loudly and in both languages: "Human presence at Pandora is now ending. Now lower the RDA banner please, mr. colonel!" Jake wasn't quite steady in English anymore.

The company banner was lowered and handed over to the colonel, it felt like a national flag even though it didn't have the status. Up went a sky blue sheet with a golden embroidered Tree of Souls. It had been created for the occasion with a design proposed by one of the female avatars. Zingitar then called out his "Wintxu meuia!" and pointed at the space ferry ramp. The kumpongu again made that alley, showing the way off Pandora. The civilians walked on board first and then the marines marched on in closed order. Shawn O'Leary and Sarasinithat boarded too, carrying the manuscript and a disc with footage to the show he was to create at Svarog, na'vi exopack mask firmly in place, he would soon arrive back. Finally Jake gave his military salute, na'vi style, with his knife and the colonel put his hand to his cap once again, and they shook hands.

"Let us hope that we never again need to meet in anger. Agree?" "I heartily do!"

Then the colonel boarded too and the ramp closed. Zingitar marched his kumpongu to the other side of the base and everyone went aside to give the space ferry room to take off. And then the space ferry took to the air and disappeared over the hills.

During the whole process most of the Gargoyle Fish clan stood at the outskirts gawping, afterwards Ozotx the olo'eytkan came to Jake and declared: "We can all clearly see that it will be a strong safety for us to be friends with the Namana Land Network!"

Norm came to Jake after the event, he chuckled: "I have seen you, Jeff and Trudy train them – you told us you wanted to arrange some 'military showmanship' and you don't need to eat your words! I saw utter astonishment in those human eyes… And that display when you arrived – how in the Universe did that occur to you?"

Jake smiled and answered: "Some of the display was just adaptations of the drill I remember from the drill ground at Parris Island. I saw some old videos of old rock'n roll icons, like Michael Jackson and The Sliders of more recent times, so I arranged a little. As I said after having taken over Hell's Gate, I intended to save lives by playing a psychological game."

Neytiri smiled as broadly as her mouth could manage and commented: "You obviously impressed not only tawtute eyes. I saw the eyes of the Gargoyle Fish clanspeople – they have never seen anything remotely similar during their whole lives. They joined our network at once after the show at the ceasefire day, no question asked. They may not be good warriors but they will contribute to the upkeep of the confederacy in other ways. As you know, my Jake: My father Eytukan is watching you and I can't imagine anything else than that he is EXTREMELY happy with you taking over his job!"


	10. This Must Never Happen again

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

* * *

**Making Sure that Nothing Like Shall Happen Again**

Shawn O'Leary landed at Svarog moon the day after the surrender ceremony with a space ferry departure bringing up the crew at Gargoyle Fish garrison and, na'vi exopack safely on, walked with the evacuated soldiers into the main compound. He met with Alain de Brinneville, the head of the radio connections, and presented his demands: "I have brought a speech recorded on this disc. It is a speech by some of the prominent leaders of the Na'vi Confederacies and some evidence given under oath. Our demand per the surrender agreement is that we are allowed to send this to Earth through Your wormhole, both to the Board of the RDA company and to the general public. Having sent this to Earth I will congratulate You with your successful mining site at Svarog and request You to stay satisfied with that, and then I ask You to return me down to Pandora again, not whishing to disturb You any more – like we will not like to be disturbed by You…"

De Brinneville had no great sympathy for the na'vi but he had a burning ambition. He immediately sniffed something he could spin to capture the job of his boss, chief of communications Inez Marcos Radón was known for her cool manner, she was widely regarded as highly competent by all means but also as unmusical to the politics going on at the Board, she gave an aloof and distant impression and she was frequently absent. If he could discredit her… my oh my, a job at the Board! Problem only, he would take down all the board but so what. He sent the video to the Board and also to a TV journalist he knew at home in Nantes, France.

So people watching TV could some days later behold a speech held at evening news, first in France but very soon in other parts of the world belonging to Earth too. Together with talking images of burnt forests, of heaps of dead na'vi, of wilful mutilations were shown, narrated by Shawn. It wasn't said as nobody over there needed to know, but the video disc had been recorded about a year and a half ago, shortly after the outbreak of the war.

This was the speech after the show itself:

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, please forgive my unusual look! My name is Shawn O'Leary, once a human like all of You, with my wife Maeve I was once a citizen of naPoblachta naH'Eìrann, the Republic of Ireland.

I came to the moon of Pandora, my present home, in the solar system of Alpha Centauri for those of You who don't know, sixteen years ago. Together with my wife I was to study the geophysics of this moon, under the auspices of the late dr. Grace Augustine and in the pay of the Resource Development Administration, the RDA for shorts. To simplify our studies we, and a number of other researchers at other sciences and research staff otherwise, were equipped with bodies better suited for moving around in this environment than our human bodies, so called 'avatars'.

You may or You may not have heard about them before now, and You have just seen documentation of the horrid massacres and depredations RDA security personnel commited to extend their mining operations for the unobtanium mineral last time they came down to the lands of Pandora. Granted, it is very valuable to Earth and human future but no pecuniary profit in the world can ever justify those brutalities I and my avatar teammates once witnessed: Massacres by gas bombing, machine gunning whole bands, torture, gang rape, wholesale environmental degradation, vandalism to homes and sacred monuments… as you have seen on this video movie some minutes ago. And I can assure You that You have not seen the worst of the events that has taken place – simply because no camera was present!

So when one of the research support staff members, Jacob Anderson Sully by full name, a former marine with distinguished battle record, raised a na'vi martial resistance force to put an end to this barbary, the members of the avatar team including me, civilians though we all were, joined the resistance force with great enthusiasm. We saw it as a moral obligation to the environment we were guests in. It didn't matter to us whether these misdeeds where done out of malice, ignorance or simply indifference, we had to put a stop to them. And we succeeded with assisting the Na'vi armed forces materially – it is something we of the former avatar team are proud of to this day.

The RDA employees were soundly beaten in battle and evicted from the moon of Pandora that time, soon to be fourteen years ago now. We of the research team were offered to stay at Pandora to make our projects finish if we felt like and then go back to Earth, or it would be possible to transfer to na'vi bodies permanently if we learned to live in and respect the na'vi culture and Pandora nature. Most of them chose the latter when their projects came to ends, twelve years after the war with RDA and approaching three years ago now.

However, the last InterStellar Vessels to arrive from Earth came with sinister intentions. Those humans who came up from Pandora and boarded the ISV 'Canopus', intending to return to Earth, were murdered simply because its commander Cox didn't want to use the cryo-hibernating capsules for them – this and much else incriminating you will hear the proof of shortly. The Na'vi had to fight a more than two year long war to force the new and even larger RDA force off the moon, supported by na'vi people the RDA duped into supporting them. The Na'vi Confederation, of which I have been appointed emissary, managed to capture a RDA agent who revealed to us the even more than ever sinister plans of the company, of a wholesale genocide. I leave the word to miss Naraporn Sarasinithat who will now give her testimony."

The focus moved over to Sarasinithat, in her avatar body.

"My name is as given Naraporn Sarasinithat. I was born in the year of 2140, in the city of Chiang Mai, Thailand. (She recited a greeting in Thai and took a reverential bow, Thai style.) May my destiny be more despicable than any human alive can imagine if I now give false testimony, this oath and my greeting in formal Thai I declare to make all of You watching this understand and accept that I speak with truth and honesty, as a loyal subject of the kingdom of Thailand and with reverence to what Lord Buddha once said about respect for the dignity of every living thing. I didn't use to be but I am a devout Buddhist now and I believe in the fact of karma. I declare that am doing this to atone for the wrongs I and other employees of the RDA company have committed, as I have discovered the last years.

I know what I am now about to give testimony of because I was, and I still am but probably not for much longer, an employee of the RDA department of PR. To do my job properly I was given information pertaining to it, up at the ISV I came to witness events, I heard talk between responsible people and I have had talks with human prisoners of war taken by the Na'vi. I can in other words say that I do know what I am talking about.

I first give testimony that mr. Harold Nuñez, mr. Vytautas Iniskius and his wife miss Ewa Iniskiene, when they boarded the ISV 'Canopus' because they wanted to return to Earth, were told that to go into cryo-hibernation for their voyage back to Earth they were to be given an injection to make the hibernating process simpler for them, but the injection was lethal, the military commander brigadier Neville Cox ordered it to save weight for cryo-capsules, to bring unobtanium mineral back to Earth rather than human beings. He was killed during the war and has faced his karma. Those medical personnel who did as they were ordered by him are murderers too and should face a trial for their crime when they are back at Earth.

I next give testimony that the intentions of the RDA company were all the time, behind very many nice phrases, in the long term to dominate the planet and to destroy all life, sentient or not, that would stand in the way of them digging up and sending to Earth the mineral, and earning huge profits in the process. They went to war to have their desire and many lives, both human and na'vi, were wasted in this fight for freedom. I have heard that some 4000 human lives have been lost, the number of na'vi killed is uncertain but a good deal higher for sure.

Finally, and most damningly of all, I can testify that the Board of RDA has consigned an ISV due to arrive at the Alpha Centauri solar system in less than four years, part of the cargo is a load of virus cultures concocted in a corporate laboratory to kill off as many na'vi people as possible from the moon, preferably all. If this mission is allowed to come to its intended conclusion it will be an indelible stain to the karma of all those in the RDA company who contributed to it.

The Namana Land Confederation has for my services to the confederation offered me right to stay with some clan or other all the rest of my days but I regard it as my duty to make sure that such a disaster as I have witnessed these last years is never going to happen ever again, by returning to Earth to bear witness to what I have seen and heard. I will gladly return to Pandora later to settle permanently if I somehow get an opportunity. I regard myself as about to be fired by the company and I may be killed too for my testimony but my conscience doesn't allow me anything else, I am resigned to die if I have to.

I say to all Earthlings, stop the RDA company from committing such crimes and keep them from repeating those already committed, for the sake of the karma of all of Earth!"

O'Leary took the word again.

"You have now heard her testimony, You now know what kind of people are in charge of the company, have them replaced with someone of better ethical standard!

Good bye, God bless all of Earth!"

And according to the surrender agreement he was shipped back down to Pandora. Sarasinithat was put on the first arriving ISV and sent back to Earth.

Back at Earth the video of O'Leary and Sarasinithat made a big sensation, the French journalist became a celebrity reporter overnight. Suddenly every independent government had a case against RDA, quite a few of them was all of a sudden able to present grievances unconnected with the Pandora affair too. The medics who had done the bidding of Cox with murdering the Iniskius couple and Nuñez met their well-earned retribution too, Sarasinithat's personal testimony carried lots of weight. De Brinneville had meant to take over the job of his boss but very soon the company had gone bankrupt and didn't exist any more, luckily for him he very soon found himself a new and even better job than the one he used to have.

The members of the Board were less lucky. General Guerin was by now so decrepit that he was put at a geriatric ward rather than a prison cell, but retribution came to those of his staff who had committed reproachable actions in his name. CEO Gemmill fled to a mining base at the asteroid Vesta and hid there for some time until a disgruntled mining director at the asteroid Eros, named Selfridge, found out about him and gave him away, all his polished manners couldn't help him. He was along with all of them sentenced to prison terms: Head of research division Kunderaczywicz was highly astonished to realize that having fun with a virus culture in a laboratory amounted to attempted genocide, a jail cell awaited him anyhow. It didn't help technical director Sundelin too much that she had strived for postponing the heaviest involvement and to avoid the worst crimes, she had in the end feared for her job and acquiesced with the criminal decisions. The prosecutor had good assistance from Molly Perrington, the permanent secretary of the Board who had witnessed all decisions and now "sang like an opera singer" to get herself a shorter sentence, her photographic memory was highly useful to the prosecutor team. Spy chief Rondini tried to make use of his connections with the Underworld of Sicily to hide in the streets of Palermo but the Italian police dug him out and to get a lighter treatment he gave testimony against many of the big mobsters. He ended with a knife in his belly in his prison cell for that indiscretion.

The created viruses never saw the soil of Pandora. When ISV "Aldebaran" arrived at Svarog a message sent through the wormhole by the UN, more specifically by the WHO agency, was waiting for skipper Omugdechiwe. The content was a strict order demanding that the chief of biolab dump the virus culture vials down into the atmosphere of Polyphemus without delay. An invitation message was sent down to Pandora, inviting Jake Sully to come and witness that so was taking place, to calm Na'vi anxiety.

Jake went up to Svarog, along with Neytiri, Zingitar and an olo'kumpongu of warriors. They marched off the space ferry, the warriors were thinking that this was surely something they were going to tell their grandchildren about… They walked into the residential module, met with director Perry Henson and colonel Avellano Cardoso again, and his new chief of staff Bettina Cox. Jake thought to himself: "Where have I heard that surname before?"

Avellano Cardoso walked to the door in the waiting room the na'vi had been lodged in. He opened the door and said: "I now leave you to inspect the loading of the vials on to the space ferry, you will shortly be invited over to join us to witness them being dropped down into the atmosphere of Polyphemus, as agreed. Until I am back in a few minutes captain Cox will entertain you." He walked out and closed the door behind him.

Captain Cox changed her expression the moment Avellano Cardoso was out of the door, from neutral and professional her eyes instantly became venomous. She pulled a small bottle up from the room between the cups of her bra. "Well well well, Jake Sully. As you may have guessed from my surname, I am the widow of brigadier Neville Cox. So you see, your people have taken away from me both my family and my job, I am shortly to board an ISV bound for Earth and arriving there I will be paid off. Unemployment. LONELY unemployment, since my husband is dead. I want to make those who have put me in this morass pay for my loss of living – in both way of speaking, the love of my life and the economical security. So plainly speaking, I stole a virus culture vial from the load. May it smell wondrously, as your lungs are clogging with slime! I break this and in a week you are dead. I hope I manage to infect na'vi down at Pandora too…"

But captain Cox was enjoying her gloating for some seconds too long. Jake lunged at her with a tiger leap, grabbing the bottle out of her hands and landing on her upper torso while carrying the bottle safe in his embrace. "I am happy that I once long, long ago played as a soccer goalkeeper while at High School" he told himself afterwards. He weighed down with all his 150 kilograms on Cox until Neytiri came up, disarmed her and twisted her arm.

Shortly afterwads Avellano Cardoso came back. He got a view to remember: Jake Sully was standing, holding a small bottle with loving care, almost as if it was a small child. Neytiri was twisting the arms of captain Cox while major Anikitet held on to her feet. She was standing crying and shouting so many abusive words of such seriously crude kind that Avellano Cardoso had trouble believing that this was uttered by a woman. He was told the whole story, as the colonel Zingitar and his warriors also in the room could retell too. So when Cox was taken out of the room, sobbing, kicking and screaming, she was carried under Neytiri's arm like any misbehaving brat. She was taken to the marshall office and soon her wrists were adorned with handcuffs, to be indicted in court at Earth. Afterwards Jake and Neytiri boarded the space ferry and could witness how all the virus vials were plunged down into the swirling gasses of Polyphemus below. Afterwards they were shipped back down to Pandora, as agreed upon in the peace treaty.


	11. Epilogue

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

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**Epilogue**

By the time the message of the demise of the RDA company reached Pandora Mo'at had finally relinquished her tsahik status. Neytiri had taken over, a growing belly was easily visible under her formal cape at the ceremony. She was not the only one in happy circumstances, the avatar drivers soon gave their contribution to the demographic recuperation of the Omatikaya and other clans.

Sarasinithat came back after some twelve years of absence, her Buddhistic faith fit easily in with the pantheistic faith of the Na'vi. Spirits didn't reincarnate directly over to newborn kids – but probably after some time… She soon had a happy family of her own in the New Hometree.

The 2nd Na'vi – Tawtute War gave storytellers and singers lots of material for stories of bravery, trickery and pride, as well as of brutality, falsehood and arrogance.

The Na'vi system of confederations, of schooling and career Jake had founded became an integral part of the culture, not as a huge all-encompassing entity but as a system of many confederations, all of them coming together to resolve disagreements. Negotiation below the Tree of Souls was a better way of dealing with disagreement between clans than armed conflict.

Former avatars lived their lives as fully fledged na'vi, no matter eyebrows, smaller eyes and surplus fingers and toes. The children born to the former avatars were integral part of their clans – not all of them Omatikayas, Gill and Max (… sorry, Maksine) were two former avatars who settled with the Ikran clan in the end – and the children born to the avatars were with great self evidence na'vi from the moments they were born. The offspring from avatars of the Omatikaya clan sat together with kids of original na'vi and listened to stories Owen could tell about history of Earth, and gave their comments from a na'vi point of view about the indomitable Spartans at Thermopylai, about the brave warrior female Jeanne d'Arc and of course about William Wallace & Robert the Bruce – Owen was a Scotsman after all! His mate Tran Thi Dung contributed with stories from the Orient, about the brave Trung sisters from Vietnam, about the invincible Mongolian Ghenghis khan, about Mahatma Gandhi the humble ascetic who won over a mighty state with hardly a shot fired…

Those kids talked a funny mixture of English and Na'vi interspersed with some words from other Earth languages, but with time the Na'vi language won out and English turned into a foreign language dutifully learned.

When scientists from Earth landed fifty years later they found a Na'vi society essentially identical with the one dr. Augustine had described once upon a time. Only that some of them had eyebrows and five digits at hands and feet. Their language had some loanwords from English, they could recite poems about the events also related in history sources at Earth and point out where the events had taken place. Their hero of outstanding prestige was the sixth Toruk Makto, also known as Jakesully to them, he was said to be old but still alive, barely, and he had given consent to allow them to do their research, but the scientists never met him in person. But they did once meet his young granddaughter Seze who was about to succeed her mother Sylwanin as shaman of the Omatikaya clan.


End file.
